Paul Bambrick-Santoyo

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo studied social justice at Duke University, which tells you something about where his career was always heading. The path he took to get there, though, was not the obvious one. After graduating in 1994, he spent six years teaching in a bilingual school in Mexico City — long enough to build something lasting. He founded the school's International Baccalaureate program, an accomplishment that required not just pedagogical vision but the kind of relentless follow-through that would become his professional signature. By the time he left Mexico City, he had learned what it takes to build excellent education in under-resourced, complex environments, and he was just getting started.

He brought that hard-won clarity to Newark, New Jersey, where he spent more than a decade leading North Star Academies. Under his leadership, North Star became one of the highest-achieving urban school networks in New Jersey — reaching what researchers call "90/90/90" status, meaning roughly 90% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch, 90% were students of color, and 90% were proficient on state assessments. The schools earned the U.S. Department of Education's National Blue Ribbon Award. These were not easy schools in easy neighborhoods, and that was precisely the point. Paul's conviction — that all students deserve exceptional teaching, and that exceptional teaching can be built and replicated — ran through everything North Star became. North Star eventually became part of Uncommon Schools, where he serves as Chief Schools Officer.

That same conviction gave rise to the Leverage Leadership Institute, which Paul founded and leads as Dean. Through the Institute he has trained more than 30,000 school leaders worldwide in instructional leadership, data-driven instruction, and teacher coaching — the practical, replicable systems that turn individual great teachers into great school cultures. His books have become essential texts for anyone serious about school leadership: Driven by Data, Driven by Data 2.0, Leverage Leadership, Leverage Leadership 2.0, Leverage Leadership 3.0, A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0, Get Better Faster, Get Better Faster 2.0, Great Habits Great Readers, and Love & Literacy. Each one is dense with tools, frameworks, and real-school examples — the kind of book you write when you have actually done the thing you are writing about.