Nick Donohue

When former New Hampshire Education Commissioner Nick Donohue joined the philanthropic community, the lightbulb in his head switched on. As a state official, he never used the bully pulpit to hold a community conversation about transforming schools, he tells Morning Education. But when he assumed the role of president at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation in 2006, he realized the dialogue around education reform had to change.

— “Back then, I wasn’t thinking, ‘We need to transform,’ ” Donohue said. “Education leadership has always been about getting things done in a way the public wouldn’t notice too much.” And state chiefs spend a lot of time protecting their education empire from attempts to dismantle it, so it’s tough to have conversation about comprehensive reform, he said. It’s not as though he didn’t make waves in New Hampshire. “I’m proud of what we did and what we set in motion,” he said. For example, the state now offers extended learning opportunities outside the classroom for credit.


— But as president of Nellie Mae, Donohue could take things further. The conversation “was no longer just about improving the stagecoach and tightening the bolts,” he said. “It became, ‘What does an airplane look like?’” The foundation funds a number of projects that focus on student-centered, customized learning in addition to other initiatives. Since 1998, the foundation has distributed about $165 million in grants.