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Norman Atkins and the problem a new school couldn’t solve
He helped open North Star Academy with 72 students in Newark. Then Norman Atkins turned to a harder question: how do you prepare enough good teachers for schools beyond your own?
David Choi and the surprisingly hard work of working less
He found real estate while searching for early retirement. Building Leverage Companies taught David Choi a harder lesson: a business needs people who can carry it beyond its founder.
Eric Panecki and the business of getting to yes
A New Jersey property investor learned to work both sides of a deal. Eric Panecki’s path from house flips to Brick City Capital runs through data, borrowed experience, and the discipline to turn an opportunity down.
AJ Leahy and the Distance Between a Button and Help
A friend’s death sent AJ Leahy from finance into campus-safety technology. At POM Safe, he has spent the years since working on a deceptively small problem: getting a person, a location and someone who can help into the same conversation.
Daniel Weinstein Put a Sensor Where Wearables Rarely Go: Inside the Mouth
A college idea about tracking what people eat became a years-long lesson in miniaturization, manufacturing, and patience. Daniel Weinstein is building Lura Health one tiny constraint at a time.
The Startup Teaching Ventilator Patients to Breathe on Their Own Again
Every long stint on a ventilator quietly weakens the one muscle you need to breathe. XN Health's Phlex device stimulates the phrenic nerve through the breathing tube to keep the diaphragm working - and get patients off the machine sooner.
Prudential Financial
The 150-year-old insurer has become a three-engine financial machine: protection for families, retirement risk transfer for institutions, and a $1.4 trillion active asset manager. Its advantage is not novelty, but the ability to price promises that may last longer than the people who make them.
Uncommon Schools
Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that starts and runs outstanding urban public charter schools designed to close the achievement gap and prepare students from low-income communities to graduate from college. Founded around North Star Academy in Newark in 1997 and relaunched as a multi-state network in 2005, Uncommon operates roughly 53 K-12 schools serving about 20,000 students across New York City, Newark, Camden, Rochester, Troy, and Boston. Beyond running schools, it is a national force in teacher development - home to Doug Lemov's 'Teach Like a Champion' methodology - and pairs rigorous, data-driven instruction with long-term alumni college coaching.
Julie Jackson
Julie Jackson is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Uncommon Schools, a nonprofit network of high-performing public charter schools serving roughly 20,000 students across New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The first Black Co-CEO in the organization's history, she has spent three decades in education, starting as a Teach For America corps member in Paterson, New Jersey in 1994 and rising from founding teacher and principal to President and now Co-CEO. She oversees all 53 K-12 Uncommon Schools and has trained more than 25,000 teachers and leaders across the United States and abroad. Known for her belief that schools should be places of both joy and rigor, she is a recognized voice on teacher development, college completion, and equity in urban public education.