Celine Coggins

Celine Coggins founded Teach Plus in 2009 to create leadership and growth paths for excellent teachers and help stem their attrition from high-needs schools. In her role as CEO, Celine sets the national agenda for the organization that speaks to both teacher needs and policy opportunities. Celine started her career as a classroom teacher in Worcester, Massachusetts. She went on to become a special assistant to the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, working on a set of initiatives to improve the quality of the state's teaching force. Upon completing her PhD at Stanford University, Celine returned to her home state to work at Cambridge's Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, an education-focused think tank. She originally launched Teach Plus as a subsidiary of the Center. Under Celine's leadership, Teach Plus has introduced three groundbreaking programs that put teachers at the center of school- and system-level reform: The Teaching Policy Fellowship that empowers teachers to have a voice in policy discussions that impact their classrooms; the T3 Initiative designed to ensure that high-need students have access to excellent teachers; and the Teach Plus Network of more than 15,000 teachers nationwide. A nationally-recognized expert on teacher leadership, education policy standards and accountability, and union politics, Celine has addressed audiences at the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Askwith Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and on NBC's Education Nation. She appears regularly in the media and has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, among many others. Celine earned a BA in psychology from the College of Holy Cross, an MA in educational research and measurement from Boston College, and a PhD in education policy analysis from Stanford University. She is a National Center for Teacher Quality advisor, an Aspen Institute Education Fellow, and a Mind Trust Education Entrepreneurship Fellow. She is the author of more than two dozen reports and journal articles and editor of three books. The New Teacher Project recently named Celine one of their favorite thinkers of 2013. Celine lives in Milton, MA.