Ariela Rozman
Chief Executive Officer
President
Layla Avila
Vice President of Teaching Fellows Programs
Vice President of Human Resources
Vice President of Information Technology
Jessica Levin
Chief Knowledge Officer
Karla Oakley
Vice President of Training & Certification
Robin Siegel
Chief Financial Officer
Vice President of Finance
Victoria Van Cleef
Vice President of Staffing Initiatives
Who We Are
Leadership Team
The New Teacher Project’s nine-person leadership team brings to the organization over 90 years of collective experience in education and more than 70 years in organizational management. Their experience as education policy experts, as executives, and as public school teachers guides them in shaping the organization’s goals, services and strategy.
Ariela Rozman
Chief Executive Officer
Ariela Rozman began her six-year tenure with The New Teacher Project (TNTP) as Vice President of Marketing. For the past four years she has served as Vice President of Teaching Fellows Programs, growing TNTP’s largest business line to a staff of more than 60 individuals. Today, the Teaching Fellows Programs line supplies high-need school districts with roughly 2,700 high-quality teachers per year and accounts for approximately 60 percent of the organization’s revenue. For the last two years, Ariela has also chaired the Strategy Committee, a team comprised of TNTP’s senior leadership staff. Before joining The New Teacher Project, Ariela led the Online Marketing group for PlanetRx.com, which included managing the company's online new customer acquisition strategy, media buying and creative agency relationships, and large partnerships with companies such as AOL, Yahoo! and iVillage. Prior to joining PlanetRx.com, Ariela worked as Special Assistant to the CEO at Muresco, a retail and manufacturing conglomerate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she was responsible for rolling out a streamlined organizational process for the company and developing and implementing the corresponding learning modules. Ariela has also served as a consultant at Bain & Co., a leading strategy consulting firm, working with Fortune 500 companies to improve their overall growth strategies and revenue opportunities. She holds a BA in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
TIMOTHY DALY
President
As president, Timothy Daly manages TNTP’s efforts to engage the wider educational community in teacher quality reforms, including recruitment, selection, training, and staffing rules. Immediately prior to his appointment as President in 2007, Tim served as Vice President for Policy and Research, managing The New Teacher Project’s efforts to ensure that teacher hiring and staffing processes support student achievement. Tim was responsible for launching this business line in 2006 and presided over its rapid growth. He has been with TNTP since 2001 and previously served as TNTP’s managing partner for multiple contracts including the NYC Teaching Fellows program (NYCTF), the largest of The New Teacher Project’s alternate route to certification programs. In the past three years, NYCTF has attracted over 50,000 applications from individuals interested in teaching; today, there are nearly 8,000 Teaching Fellows active in more than 1,000 public schools across New York City. Tim began his career in education as a Teach For America corps member at Northeast Middle School in Baltimore. He holds a BA in American Studies from Northwestern University and a MA in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University.
Layla Avila
Vice President of Teaching Fellows Programs
As Vice President of Teaching Fellows Programs, Layla Avila oversees TNTP's largest business line and a growing staff of over 60 individuals. The Teaching Fellows Programs line supplies high-need school districts with roughly 2,700 high-quality teachers per year and accounts for approximately 60 percent of the organization’s revenue. Prior to becoming Vice President, Layla served as a Partner for the business line, managing the implementation of existing and potential projects across the Southwest. Among her other accomplishments, Layla oversaw the design and implementation the Oakland Teaching Fellows, a teacher recruitment, training, and support program for the Oakland Unified School District, which resulted in the hiring of over 130 exceptionally talented teachers. Before joining The New Teacher Project, Layla worked as a bilingual and ESL teacher at August A. Mayo Elementary School in Compton, CA, where she also served as an English Language Development specialist on the school’s Leadership Team. In addition, she served as an analyst for the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence For Hispanic Americans, an interagency working group established by President Clinton to increase educational opportunities and achieve educational excellence for Hispanic Americans. In that role, she tracked federal legislation related to education and conducted research on issues affecting Hispanic education. Layla holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University and attained a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University before joining Teach For America in 1997. Layla was elected to the South Whittier School District Board of Trustees in November 2005.
Karolyn Belcher
Vice President of Human Resources
Karolyn Belcher serves as The New Teacher Project’s Vice President of Human Resources, overseeing the organization’s efforts to recruit, select, and develop an exceptional staff of educational leaders. Karolyn began her career as a charter corps member of Teach For America, teaching science in New Orleans, Louisiana. After completing her two-year commitment, Karolyn joined the national staff of Teach For America, where she led its pre-service training institute in Houston, TX for over four years. Karolyn was one of the first employees of The New Teacher Project, working on contracts in Massachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia. She left the organization in 1999 to serve as the founding school director of the John A. Reisenbach Charter School, one of the first three charter schools in New York State. Located in central Harlem, the school served 405 students in grades K-8 by its fifth year of operation. Most recently, Karolyn served as an Instructor/Program Coordinator in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. In this role, she supervised students’ administrative internships in public and private schools, taught a course on leadership skills, and coordinated all aspects of the degree programs administered by the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Education, the premier graduate program for aspiring independent and charter school leaders. Karolyn graduated from Mount Holyoke College with honors in Biological Science. She has a Master of Arts in Education Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University where she is continuing to work towards her doctorate. She currently is the Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Explore Charter School in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, which recently earned charter renewal and recognition by the Center for Education Reform as a 2007 National Charter School of the Year.
Boris Khmelnitskiy
Vice President of Information Technology
As Vice President of Information Technology for The New Teacher Project (TNTP), Boris Khmelnitskiy oversees technology direction and strategy, manages design and implementation of internal technology projects, and ensures IT alignment with the organization’s business priorities. TNTP’s Information Technology team offers a comprehensive suite of proprietary web-based applications to the organization’s school district and state clients nationwide. Additionally, IT arms internal staff with a range of solutions that automates operational aspects of the teacher recruitment, selection, training, placement and hiring process, and focuses on data intelligence for reporting and analysis. Boris manages internal and external infrastructure, datacenter operations, and technology vendor and support team relationships. Boris started his career as a system analyst for Lehman Brothers and then joined the global financial services firm Morgan Stanley in 1997. Throughout his tenure at Morgan Stanley, Boris helped develop one of the most robust and complex equity trading infrastructures on Wall Street and participated in business expansion initiatives in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. In 2004, Boris moved from application development to Learning & Development, Morgan Stanley’s internal education organization. As a co-manager of Talent Management for Technology, Boris coordinated development and enhancement of new curricula, designed and implemented strategic learning plans, evaluated learning materials and instructional techniques, oversaw relationships with training delivery vendors and supervised the IT Analyst Training Program, one of the foremost technology induction programs on Wall Street. Boris has taught Math and Computer Science at high school and college levels throughout his professional career and actively participates in education-related community initiatives. He holds a BA in Mathematics/Computer Science and MS in Computer Science, both from New York University.
Jessica Levin
Chief Knowledge Officer
Prior to joining The New Teacher Project, Jessica served as both an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as a consultant to the Boston Plan for Excellence in Public Schools, a Boston-based local school reform initiative. Jessica previously served for four years as an elementary and secondary education policy advisor to Mike Smith, the Acting-Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington D.C. In her first job after graduating from law school, with support from an Echoing Green Fellowship, Jessica founded and directed a national project to work with parents, advocates and teachers to improve Title I education programs in low-income schools. Jessica holds a BA in Social Studies from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Karla Oakley
Vice President of Training & Certification
Karla’s tenure at TNTP began in June of 2000, when she was hired as the organization’s New York State Partner and charged with launching the NYC Teaching Fellows program, a contract with the New York City Department of Education that recruited and placed over 1,500 teachers in hard-to-staff schools across the city in its first two years. Prior to TNTP, Karla spent two years with Andersen Consulting in their Human Performance practice, working primarily in the financial services industry. Her career in education started with Teach For America (TFA), first as a corps member in the Mississippi Delta, then on TFA’s national staff with roles in new teacher support and portfolio assessment. Karla holds a BS in Psychology from Duke University.
Robin Siegel
Chief Financial Officer
Robin Siegel began her career in organizational operations and finance as a Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company, where her activities included conducting a customer management survey of the packaged goods industry, developing the retail growth strategy for a prominent U.S. apparel manufacturer, and evaluating the operational effectiveness of a leading international cosmetics industry. She went on to work at Merck-Medco in several roles, including Marketing Associate, Program Manager, and Team Leader. There, she drafted the company’s comprehensive business plan for its Partners for Healthy Aging strategy, including plans to launch a medication guidebook for seniors, and managed the development of a new prescription medication offering for its members. Robin joined The New Teacher Project in 2000 as Chief Financial Officer and currently serves as Vice President of Operations, overseeing Finance, Human Resources, and Technology operations. She holds a BS in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University.
Carol Sterlacci
Vice President of Finance
As Vice President of Finance, Carol Sterlacci oversees the planning, development, and management of TNTP’s financial functions including financial operations and reporting, internal controls, and financial strategy. Carol comes to TNTP with a Big Four accounting background and over 17 years experience in financial services, accounting, and accounting technology. Most recently, Carol served as the Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Transamerica Fund Advisors, where she was responsible for financial management, technology, and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for a $30 billion mutual fund complex. Previously she held various positions at Morgan Stanley, J.P Morgan, and Ernst & Young, where her contributions included assessments of operating effectiveness and internal control, development of accounting technology to support internal and client needs, and conducting audits. Carol is a certified public accountant, and earned her MBA from Columbia Business School, where she developed her interest in social enterprise.
Victoria Van Cleef
Vice President of Staffing Initiatives
As Vice President of Staffing Initiatives for The New Teacher Project, Victoria is charged with growing this new business line. She oversees projects that focus on building school-level capacity to make effective hires and staffing chronically low-performing schools. In her previous role as Vice President of Business Development & Communications, she oversaw the establishment of TNTP’s partnerships with school districts, state departments of education and other educational organizations, and managed the organization’s marketing strategy and goals. Prior to joining The New Teacher Project, Victoria served as a consultant to the Stupski Foundation, identifying best practices to support whole district reform efforts, and as Senior Research Associate and Special Assistant to the Dean of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, coordinating projects devoted to strengthening the teacher force in high-need districts. She has served as Special Assistant to the Chancellor for the New York City public schools under two administrations, working on both instructional and operational initiatives. Victoria has also worked in curriculum and product development for The Efficacy Institute, a national non-profit educational consulting firm. She holds a BA in Classical Civilizations from the University of California at Los Angeles and a Master’s in Public Policy Analysis from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the YWCA of Memphis, TN.