Dr. Gisele C. Shorter
Dr. Gisele C. Shorter provides strategy, policy, impact scaling and fundraising consulting services to non-profits, coalitions and advocacy groups to help them expand their reach and strengthen their impact.
Gisele’s career is rooted in a deep belief that an equitable society starts with an equitable education system. For 20 years, she has led large-scale community-based programs, research and policy initiatives to advance justice and equity, close health disparities, and ensure access and opportunities for Black and Brown youth and communities to flourish. Dr. Shorter has led youth development, education and community-based organizations through programmatic resets, large-scale culture change initiatives and strategic re-engineering. In 2018 she was recruited to the Raikes Foundation to lead the K-12 School & System Redesign portfolio focused on a commitment to grow the foundation’s impact and to advance justice and equity in the redesign of our national public education system by leveraging the science of learning and development. The heartbeat of the K-12 portfolio is the Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) Network. Today she is responsible for impact and strategy coherence across the K-12, postsecondary, education fieldbuilding, and policy portfolios, as the Director of the National Education Strategy. She ensures grantmaking investments advance education policies and practices that support students furthest from educational justice, including those experiencing homelessness, foster care, and the justice system.
Gisele began her career in the private sector with leadership experiences including Volume.com, an AOL Time Warner company, where she was Head of Research and ESPN, Inc. where she was a Program Management Associate. She has successfully leveraged her private sector experience, community connections, and academic training to drive positive change on behalf of the most vulnerable youth and communities.
She is an adjunct professor and founding faculty member of the EdD in Leadership and Innovation degree program at NYU Steinhardt Department of Administration, Leadership, and Technology. She advises doctoral students on a wide range of complex problems of practice, from the role of philanthropy in China’s evolving socio-political context to the role of district superintendents as agents for change.
Dr. Shorter earned her Ed.D. from Columbia University Teachers College. She holds an M.P.A. from Long Island University and a B.A. from Amherst College. She is a Pahara Aspen Fellow and active member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
