Today Accelerate is announcing that Dr. Nakia Towns will join our growing organization as Chief Program Officer. Dr. Towns will transition from her role as Deputy Superintendent of Gwinnett County Public Schools.
Dr. Towns has a proven track record of raising the bar for all kids, closing opportunity gaps, increasing graduation rates, and improving postsecondary readiness. During her tenure as Chief Accountability Officer at Knox County Schools, the district became the only large urban district to ever earn the state’s highest accountability designation and achieve a 90% graduation rate. Later, as Chief of Staff for Hamilton County Schools (HCS), Dr. Towns drove continuous improvement across all departments, leading HCS to become the fastest improving district in Tennessee and to her eventual appointment as interim Superintendent. She has served as Assistant Commissioner of Data and Research at the Tennessee Department of Education, as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University, as a practitioner advisor for the Annenberg Institute at Brown University’s EdResearch for Recovery project, and as an expert peer reviewer, keynote speaker, facilitator, and panelist for numerous conferences to support the work of educators across the country.
Effective tutoring is the one of the best ways to help students recover from pandemic-era learning loss and close longstanding opportunity gaps. Now our mission is to make it a standard feature of the American school day to reach the students who can benefit most. Dr. Towns’ experience and expertise will be invaluable in helping us get there. Her career in public education demonstrates her strength as a leader, problem solver, and policy partner, and we can’t wait for her to start making our work even better and more impactful.
Dr. Towns will begin at Accelerate in May.
