Jon Schnur is chief executive officer and co-founder of New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS), the largest organization in the nation for recruiting and training urban principals. He has served as an advisor to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, a member of the Presidential Transition Team, and a senior policy advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Schnur has developed national education policies from preschool to higher education - with special focus on teacher and educator quality, reforming urban school systems, charter schools, after-school programs, and early learning and preschools. He believes that quality education for all children is achievable, essential, and urgently needed to create a better future for our nation and world.

Schnur's national non-profit organization, NLNS, recruits and trains about ten percent of the new principals needed for high poverty, low-income schools in the United States. In September 2009, NLNS became the first and only non-profit-led partnership with a public school system to win Harvard University's Innovations in Government Award from the ASH Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. NLNS has one mission: driving high levels of learning and achievement for every student by attracting and preparing outstanding leaders and supporting the performance of the urban public schools they lead at scale.

Before co-founding NLNS, Schnur served as special assistant to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, President Clinton's White House associate director for educational policy, and senior advisor of education to Vice President Gore.

Schnur graduated from Princeton University with a B.A in Politics with honors, took coursework at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Harvard Business School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government and graduated from a Wisconsin public high school.

NOTE: Bio is as it appeared in The Forum program on November 11, 2010.