John White is a member of the Board of Directors at Propel America, which he co-founded. He serves as Chief Success Officer at Great Minds, the fast-growing developer of Eureka Math, Wit & Wisdom, Geodes, and PhD Science. John’s role is to assure the effective implementation of curriculum for millions of U.S. school children, leading the company’s customer success, professional services, research, and public policy teams.

John previously served as Louisiana State Superintendent of Education. Over nine years, he led nationally recognized efforts to unify the state’s fragmented early childhood system, to modernize curriculum, to professionalize educator preparation, to provide pathways to prosperity for all high school graduates, and to rebuild the New Orleans public school system in the decade following Hurricane Katrina.

Louisiana’s class of 2019 included 5,000 more graduates than did the class of 2012. Five thousand more students in that class earned the state’s TOPS college scholarship, and 5,000 more enrolled in college after graduating high school. In that time, the number of Louisiana students earning Advanced Placement early college credits increased by 167 percent, and Louisiana now ranks number one in the nation in the percentage of high school seniors completing an application for higher education financial aid.

In 2019, Louisiana students ranked first in the nation for improvement in 8th grade mathematics on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Over the decade spanning John’s tenure, Louisiana ranked in the top 10 states for improvement on every one of the four main NAEP tests.

Prior to being named State Superintendent, John served as Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, leading the renovation of public schools in New Orleans in the years after Hurricane Katrina. He previously served under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein as Deputy Chancellor for the New York City Department of Education and served as Executive Director of Teach For America – Chicago and Teach For America – New Jersey. He began his career as an English teacher at William L. Dickinson High School in Jersey City, New Jersey.

John is co-founder of Propel America, a non-profit start-up connecting recent high school graduates with good first jobs, and Watershed Advisors, a consultancy to governments scaling high-impact education initiatives. He is a former director at Great Minds PBC and an Education Advisory Council member at the global consultancy Alvarez & Marsal.

John earned a bachelor’s degree with distinction from the University of Virginia, a master’s degree in public administration from New York University, and doctorate in education from Johns Hopkins University. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and three children.