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JET’s Board of Directors proudly welcomes Andrea Zayas as our new Executive Director. Andrea brings over 20 years of outstanding professional experience in educational leadership and entrepreneurship, which she is eager to apply to strengthen and build JET’s mission of providing all students in Massachusetts and beyond with well prepared, committed, diverse educators. “JET’s mission of supporting paraprofessionals is a key to solving the difficulties we are experiencing in our teacher pipelines. I am excited to work with this dynamic and visionary team and Board, and looking forward to working with our community, district and philanthropic partners to grow our impact on paraprofessionals’ and students’ lives.” A nationally-recognized leader in education policy and practice, Andrea Zayas envisions self-determined communities of color teeming with thinkers, doers, and makers who are inspired and prepared from youth to use their gifts in service to collective wellness. Since 1998, she has leveraged her experience as a public school teacher and mother to build bridges between families, educators, administrators, and policymakers - developing and implementing research-backed strategies that have been adopted around the country to maximize positive outcomes for Black and Brown youth. In 2008 and 2018, respectively, Zayas founded La Cima Elementary Charter School in Brooklyn, New York and the New Orleans Youth Alliance, both award-winning institutions that center youth leadership as an integral tool in community sustainability. Zayas has also served as Regional State Turnaround Superintendent in Camden, New Jersey, Director for Charter School Accountability for the New York City Department of Education, and Chief Academic Office at Boston Public Schools. Most recently, she developed and executed education grantmaking, policy, and systems change work as the National Director of K-12 Education at the Ballmer Group. She is excited to be starting in a new role as Executive Director of a Massachusetts based non-profit organization, Journey into Education and Teaching (JET) whose mission it is to diversify the teacher workforce by supporting para educators to complete steps to become licensed educators. She currently serves on the Biden Administration’s Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics and as a faculty member at Boston University's Wheelock College of Education. Zayas is a first-generation high school and college graduate and proud daughter of the African diaspora with indigenous Colombian and Afro-Boricua roots. She is a doctoral candidate in Urban Education Leadership at Xavier University of Louisiana. She earned her Master’s in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education and her bachelor’s at Rutgers University.
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