Tony Wagner
Tony Wagner has served as Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since its inception in 2000. An initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CLG is a “R & D” center that helps teams to be effective change leaders in schools and districts. He also was on the faculty of the Executive Leadership Program for Educators, a joint initiative of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Business School, and Kennedy School of Government.
Tony Wagner consults widely to public and independent schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally and served as Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for eight years. Tony has worked for more than thirty-five years in the field of school improvement, and he is a frequent keynote speaker and widely published author on education and society. Prior to assuming his current position at Harvard, Tony was a high school teacher for twelve years; a school principal; a university professor in teacher education; co-founder and first executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility; project director for the Public Agenda Foundation in New York; and President and CEO of the Institute for Responsive Education. He earned his a Masters of Arts in Teaching and Doctorate in Education at Harvard University.
Tony’s publications include numerous articles and four books. His latest book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—And What We Can do About It was recently published by Basic Books and will soon be translated into Chinese. His other titles include: Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools; Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools; and How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited.

