Vanessa Wilkins, Founder
As Founder of Future School Lab, Vanessa speaks globally about innovation in education, consults with purpose-driven brands and leaders, and serves as an Expert-in-Residence at Harvard Innovation Lab.
Previously, Vanessa served as North America Community Impact Director at Nike, leading a statewide education initiative in Oregon, managing key partnerships, and engaging Nike leaders to innovate in education. Her work on the Nike School Innovation Fund was recently documented in a Harvard case used to teach shared value and scaling impact in a joint program between the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Harvard Business School.
Prior to Nike, Vanessa co-founded the consultancy Partners in Scale (now Impact Giving Advisors), served as VP for Worldwide Human Resources at EF Education, and was Managing Director at Friends of the Children where she now serves on the National Board of Directors. She also serves on the board of Construct Foundation, Oregon Community Foundation, and Hundred.org's Advisory Board. Early in her career, Vanessa worked in Venezuela for Empresas Mendoza on a global financial restructuring and then liquidated the group’s trade finance bank in NYC.
Vanessa received a BS from Boston University and an MBA from Harvard.
Amy Madsen, Partner, Research
Amy has 20 years of international non-profit, for-profit and public experience, working with top tier organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, Nike School Innovation Fund, Habitat for Humanity and the Gates Foundation.
Amy, as Co-Founder and Principal Research Officer of Partners in Scale, delivers comprehensive research and analysis to inform decision making. Whether it’s a complete industry-wide landscaping document, an internal or external stakeholder analysis, or specific market research: she engages in multi-year initiatives as well as quick, one-day projects. Her research experience is varied – covering sectors such as: education and literacy, agriculture, the economy, the entertainment industry, the environment, health care, hunger, technology and volunteer-tourism (to name a few).
Prior to her consulting practice, Amy was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Her specialty was business and economics. In this role, she was primarily tasked with analyzing business prospects for US companies and providing economic forecasts for the countries where she was stationed.
Amy has worked in Bahrain, Iraq, Libya, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. She speaks German, some French, Japanese and limited Arabic. She has a Master’s Degree in International Relations, with an emphasis on Intercultural Communication and Negotiation from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.
Amy recently published a memoir, "Green Zone Diary: A Diplomat's War Story."
Jason Griffiths, Partner, School Design
Jason is an entrepreneurial and mission driven leader experienced in building innovative educational organizations. He leverages the expertise gained in building multiple educational and non-profit organizations to support the growth and development of his clients.
Throughout the course of his career, Jason has held multiple roles, including teacher, athletic coach, school leader, mentor, non-profit executive, school designer, curriculum developer, and consultant.
Jason was the founding headmaster of The Brooklyn Latin School (TBLS), a selective New York City public high school which grew from 43 to 625 students under his leadership. In 2013, just seven years after opening, US News and World Report ranked TBLS as the top public high school not only in New York City, but in New York state. Two years later, Newsweek lauded TBLS as the fourth best high school in the United States for low income students.
After leaving TBLS, Jason served as the Managing Director of Partnerships at The National Academy for Advanced Teacher Education (NAATE). In his role, Jason constructed the partnerships team, where he set the strategy for new business development and served as the lead relationship manager with districts, charter management organizations, faith-based private schools, and local and national philanthropists throughout the country.
More recently, Jason has served as an embedded partner with two innovative, entrepreneurial, and rapidly growing organizations supporting them in school design, organizational growth, curriculum development, recruitment, and team building.
Throughout the last 15 years, Jason has also served as a board member with three different non-profit organizations: Great Minds, New Leaders, and The Princeton-Blairstown Center. In his role as board member, Jason has served as an instrumental partner in guiding all three organizations through the midst of significant scaling into sustained paths of growth.
Jason earned an A.B in History from Princeton University and a M.Ed. from Temple University.