DALLAS—Denise Swee’alt Augustine, retired former superintendent of Indigenous Education for the Ministry of Education in British Columbia, began her term as board chair of the Learning Forward Board of Trustees on Jan. 1, 2026.
Augustine succeeds Linda Chen, president of UnboundED, who joined the Learning Forward Board in 2022 and will serve one more year as board past chair.
Denise Swee’alt Augustine, board chair
Linda Chen, board past chair
Vivian Mihalakis, board chair elect
Zipporah Miller, new board member
Augustine joined Learning Forward’s Board of Trustees in 2022. Augustine, a First Nations woman of mixed ancestry, lives in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, the unceded lands of the hul’q’umi’num people. Denise retired last year from a secondment with the Ministry oof Education where she served as the Superintendent of Indigenous Education. With over 30 years as an educator, Denise is a passionate champion for systemic changes that support equity for all learners. She and her husband Greg are proud parents of two grown daughters and a granddaughter.
Vivian Mihalakis is Learning Forward’s new board chair elect. Mihalakis is deputy director of K-12 Education for The Gates Foundation where she supports the foundation’s place-based delivery strategy for testing, codifying, and scaling up school improvement models. Before joining the foundation, Mihalakis was a senior fellow at the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, where she led the English language arts product and professional development teams. She began her career as a high school ELA teacher and holds a Ph.D. in instruction and learning from the University of Pittsburgh.
Retaining their seats on the board in 2026 are Jaime Aquino, superintendent of schools for San Antonio (TX) ISD; Segun Eubanks, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Education, Innovation and Improvement in College Park (MD); Sue Sarber, retired director of professional learning for Arlington Public Schools in Arlington, VA; and Nader Twal, special assistant to the superintendent in Long Beach Unified School District in Long Beach, CA.
Joining the board on Jan. 1, 2026, for a three-year term is newly elected board member Zipporah Miller, director of organizational learning in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Annapolis, MD, where she designs and leads innovative professional learning initiatives. Miller is a distinguished leader in education with over 30 years of experience. A member of Learning Forward since 2009, Miller has served on the Learning Forward Foundation Board of Directors (2022-2025), participates as a member of the Learning Forward A-Team, is a graduate of the Learning Forward Academy Class of 2020 and served on the Washington DC Annual Conference Host Committees in 2015 and 2023.
