Denise Swee’alt Augustine 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. Augustine retired last year from a secondment with the Ministry of Education in British Columbia, Canada, where she served as the superintendent of Indigenous education. With over 30 years as an educator, she is a passionate champion for systemic changes that support success for all learners.

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.

Retaining their seats on the board in 2026 are Jaime Aquino, superintendent of schools for San Antonio Independent School District in Texas; Segun Eubanks, director of the University of Maryland Center for Educational Innovation and Improvement in College Park, Maryland; Sue Sarber, retired director of professional learning for Arlington Public Schools in Arlington, Virginia; and Nader Twal, special assistant to the superintendent in Long Beach Unified School District in Long Beach, California.

Zipporah Miller joined the board on Jan. 1, 2026, for a three-year term. Miller is director for organizational learning in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Annapolis, Maryland, where she designs and leads innovative professional learning initiatives. A member of Learning Forward since 2009, Miller has served on the Learning Forward Foundation board of directors (2022-2025), is a graduate of the Learning Forward Academy Class of 2020, and served on the host committees for Learning Forward’s annual conferences in Washington, D.C., in 2015 and 2023.