Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan on Wednesday named a former U.S. Department of Education official as head of education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a major early hire at one of philanthropy’s most scrutinized organizations.
Jim Shelton will oversee what could total billions of dollars in spending on education by the Palo Alto, Calif. couple. In an interview with The Chronicle one day before the announcement, Mr. Shelton said that priorities include personalized learning, reducing the impact of adversity, and working with educators and others.
“The thing I am most excited about is there is already a lot of great work that is happening to learn from,” Mr. Shelton said. “With the right resources, I think we can both accelerate the pace of impact that work is having but also, more importantly, accelerate the pace of learning that is happening in the field.”
Mr. Shelton served as assistant deputy secretary, and then deputy secretary and chief operating officer, at the education department from 2009 to 2015. Most recently, he was president of 2U, a fast-growing education-technology company that works with colleges and universities to deliver graduate programs online.
He was also the founding executive director of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper Initiative and spent more than seven years as program director for education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
‘Blown Away’
Mr. Shelton said he first met Dr. Chan last year at the annual NewSchools Venture Fund summit and since then has had other conversations with her and Mr. Zuckerberg about education. When the couple reached out about the position at their limited-liability company, he “was blown away,” he said.
Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan are willing to take on work that could take decades to bear fruit, Mr. Shelton said.
Education is one of the couple’s biggest and most controversial areas of giving. Existing entities, including Startup: Education and Zuckerberg Education Ventures, will be folded into the company and managed by Mr. Shelton.
One exception is the Primary School, an East Palo Alto school for low-income families that the couple founded last year: It will continue to operate separately, with Dr. Chan as CEO.
Dr. Chan and Mr. Zuckerberg, both 31, announced in December that they would commit 99 percent of their Facebook stock, valued at about $45 billion, to improving the world. They created the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, from which they plan to make charitable grants and for-profit investments.
Last week, Mr. Zuckerberg and the Facebook Board of Directors proposed a new class of stock that would allow the founder to sell stock without relinquishing control to other shareholders. It requires shareholder approval and is already being challenged.
