Learning and Leading: Leveraging Our Power for Public Education
The 2025 OEA Summer Leadership Academy will convene Monday, June 23 – Wednesday, June 25, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Columbus, 350 North High Street, Columbus, OH, 43215. The OEA Summer Leadership Academy is designed to help OEA members at all levels of the association realize and develop skills and talents as leaders of their profession and their association, while building relationships and organizing for power.
- Over 30 leadership development sessions for your profession and your association.
- Learning experiences for members at all levels of the association.
- Build on knowledge and skills articulated in the NEA Leadership Competency Framework.
- Networking Opportunities
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr. John H. Jackson, President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education
Dr. John H. Jackson is President and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. In this role, Dr. Jackson leads the Foundation’s efforts to ensure a fair and substantive opportunity to learn for all students regardless of race or gender. Dr. Jackson joined the Schott Foundation after serving in several senior level positions. Among them, National Director of Education and Chief Policy Officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 2000-2007. In 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton appointed Dr. Jackson to serve as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education.
Dr. Jackson has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Race, Gender, and Public Policy at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Earlier in his career, Dr. Jackson conducted extensive research at the Harvard Civil Rights Project on civil rights and opportunity gap issues.
Dr. Jackson has been elected or appointed to serve on many boards and commissions. Among them the Xavier University of Louisiana Board of Directors, Nellie Mae Education Foundation Board of Directors, Harvard University Board of Alumni, Association of Black Foundation Executives, American Bar Association At-Risk Commission. Dr. Jackson also served on the Obama-Biden transition team as a member of the President’s 13-member Education Policy Transition Work Group.
A native of the Southside of Chicago and product of the public school system, Dr. Jackson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Xavier University of Louisiana; A Master of Education in Education Policy from the University of Illinois’ College of Education; and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois’ College of Law. In addition, Dr. Jackson received a Master of Education and Doctorate of Education in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Historian and Professor, The Ohio State University
Hasan Kwame Jeffries teaches, researches, and writes about the African American experience from a historical perspective.
He has chronicled the civil rights movement in the ten-episode Audible Originals series “Great Figures of the Civil Rights Movement,” and has told the remarkable story of the original Black Panther Party in Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, which has been praised as “the book historians of the black freedom movement have been waiting for.”
Hasan has collaborated on several public history projects, including serving as the lead scholar and primary scriptwriter for the $27 million redesign of the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He currently serves as the chairperson of the Board of Directors of The Montpelier Foundation, which stewards the Virginia estate of James Madison, the fourth president of the United States and the architect of the Constitution.
Hasan regularly shares his expertise on African American history and contemporary Black politics through public lectures, op-eds, and interviews with print, radio, and television news outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNN, and MSNBC.
He has also contributed to several documentary film projects as an historical advisor and featured on-camera scholar, including the 2023 documentaries Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World (PBS) and Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power (NBC/Peacock). And his 2020 TEDx Talk “Why we must confront the painful parts of US history” has been viewed more than 2 million times.
For his public history work, the King Arts Center in Columbus, Ohio honored him with a 2023 Legacy and Legends Award.
Hasan’s commitment to teaching what he calls “Hard History” led him to edit Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement, a collection of essays by leading civil rights scholars and teachers that explores how to teach civil rights history accurately and effectively, and to host the podcast “Teaching Hard History,” a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Learning for Justice division. Hasan also helps school districts develop anti-racism programming and culturally responsive curricular content centered on social studies by conducting professional development workshops for teachers and administrators.
A College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Associate Professor in the Department of History at The Ohio State University, Hasan takes great pride in opening students’ minds to new ways of understanding the past and the present. For his pedagogical creativity and effectiveness, he has received numerous awards, including Ohio State’s highest commendation for teaching – the Ohio State Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Hasan graduated from Morehouse College in 1994 with a BA in history and earned his PhD in American history with a specialization in African American history from Duke University in 2002.
Registration has closed for this event.