Operation Education: Assessing the Empowerment Zone after its first year

Marcus is the Chief of Staff at Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), a national nonprofit leadership development organization inspiring and supporting a network of civic leaders to end the injustice of educational inequity. Prior to this national role, he led LEE’s work in Houston, Texas.

Marcus began a career in education after graduating with a degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin by joining Teach For America. He spent eight years teaching in and helping lead primary schools in Houston, New Orleans, and Chicago. As a Dean of Culture and Director of Community Engagement, Marcus has worked to authentically engage families and communities through on-campus programming, family fellowships, and direct family advocacy at the local, state, and federal level.

Marcus’ civic engagement while in high school and has since worked on over 100 political campaigns, including presidential campaigns. At work, he supports current and former educators to build the skills needed so they can advocate for their students, organize their communities, have access to leaders that create education policy, and become public/elected leaders themselves. Marcus has directly engaged over 700 educators in Houston through one-on-one coaching and group leadership development training over the past three years. He has facilitated sessions on how to effectively run for office across the country for hundreds of other educators.

Marcus also advises ONE Houston (the Organizing Network of Educators), a regional community organizing group that consists of teachers and students. The collective has addressed policy issues impacting the school-to-prison pipeline and ran successful actions to influence local school district policies affecting over 11 million dollars of funding, terminating exclusionary discipline practices, and reallocating resources to include restorative justice practices.

Marcus currently lives in New York City where he enjoys using mass transit, spending time thinking about writing a book, and talking about Texas to anyone that will listen.