Board Of Directors

Margie Yeager

Chair

Margie Yeager is a Partner at Education Forward DC, leading their Advocacy portfolio. In this role she helps direct philanthropic resources to create enabling conditions to advance quality and equity in public schools. Prior to this, she was the Director of Advocacy and Policy at Chiefs for Change, a bipartisan coalition of state and district members, and the Chief of Staff to the DC Deputy Mayor for Education. Margie began her career as a second-grade teacher at Simon Elementary in DC with Teach for America. She received her BA from Tufts University summa cum laude and her MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School with thesis honors.

Debbie Harrison

Vice Chair

Debbie Harrison is a Senior Director of Government Affairs at Cigna. Her career has focused on policy and legal advice related to employee benefits, health care, and tax matters. She has a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, an MA in internal policy from the University of Sydney, and a BA in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard College. Debbie has been a member of the Rotary Club of Capitol Hill since 2008.

Melissa Reaktenwalt

Treasurer

Melissa Reaktenwalt is a biracial black woman financial services professional and wealth manager who is passionate about educating individuals and business owners about the power of smart and efficient money management. As the founder and lead advisor of EViE Financial Group, she strives to provide comprehensive financial planning and holistic wealth management to young professionals, executive women, and small business owner clients throughout the country, all from diverse financial backgrounds and with varied needs. During her more than 15 years in the financial planning industry, Melissa has focused on helping others create and sustain financial freedom and wellness through better understanding what their money has the potential to do for them. In addition to working with clients and small businesses directly, Melissa presents at regional and national conferences, as well as teaches in-depth educational courses focused on financial empowerment and actionable planning strategies.

Ja’Sent Brown

Secretary

Ja’Sent serves as the Chief Impact Officer at DC Central Kitchen where they use food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities through job training and sustainable food access programming. Prior to this, Ja’Sent served as the Homeless Education State Coordinator to connect homeless families to educational services, and the inaugural Director of the DC Reengagement Center, which provides barrier remediation services to youth and young adults who have dropped out of high school, all at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English degree at the University of the District of Columbia, and a Master of Social Work degree at Walden University.  She is the proud wife of a 5^th District police officer, and mother of two.

Davey Ahearn

Davey Ahearn is the founder and CEO of BluestoneLogic, a systems, software, and cybersecurity engineering firm based in Washington, DC. Its founding premise was simple – the Department of Defense and other federal agencies maintained many legacy systems that no longer met the expectations set by the software and mobile apps their users used in their everyday lives. This generated a demand for creative systems modernization within the constraints of the policies that govern DoD’s mission system IT infrastructure. Davey holds a master’s degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree from James Madison University in English & Technical Communication. He currently lives in Washington, DC, where he enjoys playing tennis, competing in motorsports, and attending as many of the World Series Champion Washington Nationals’ games as possible.

William E. Brown Jr.

William E. Brown Jr, or Bill as he prefers, joined One World Education’s Board in the summer of 2023. After joining UNCF in the fall of 2019, Bill currently serves as the Senior Community Engagement Manager on UNCF’s K-12 Advocacy team and has responsibilities for overseeing UNCF’s community engagement activities, both here in the Washington, DC, region, as well as UNCF’s national engagement activities. Bill comes equipped with vast knowledge and experience having worked on DC-specific K12 issues for over a decade. Prior to joining UNCF, Bill worked on education policy and oversight at the Council of the District of Columbia, having served in the offices of the Council Chair and two At-Large Council offices; including former At-Large Council Member Sekou Biddle who now serves as UNCF’s vice president for K-12 advocacy. Bill is a native Washingtonian and a graduate of DC Public Schools. He has served as an elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and Chair of ANC 1A, in addition to his appointments to multiple commissions, boards, and councils.

Rashid Mayes

Rashid Mayes is an Engineering Manager at Microsoft and Washington, DC Community Partner for the New York City-based Fintech Connector. With a career that spans roles at Microsoft, Facebook, Capital One, and several other companies across Silicon Valley, New York, and Washington, DC, he also combined his passions for technology and service by co-founding the Astrient Foundation. At Microsoft, Rashid leads a team of geo-dispersed engineers building tools for workforce sentiment capture and analytics. Before joining Microsoft, Rashid led engineering teams that created tools to help Meta perform content reviews across its family of applications including Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a Director of Software Engineering for Capital One, he led teams responsible for container orchestration, the mobile CI/CD, and cloud governance, risk, and compliance for some of the bank’s most critical AWS accounts. Rashid is a graduate of Hampton University and currently lives in Howard County. His spare time is dedicated to his daughters and working to promote technology as a means of social innovation.

Dave Paris

Dave Paris, of Paris Advisory LLC, is a business economist and damages expert. He has over 30 years of experience addressing damages, valuation, and competition issues in complex commercial disputes in U.S. courts and administrative proceedings, and he also advises clients on issues involving intellectual property. These disputes and advisory engagements have involved patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, secondary considerations of non-obviousness, breach of contract, fraud, employment and antitrust violation, and covered a wide range of industries. Mr. Paris has provided expert testimony on damages, including lost profits and reasonable royalties, and on economic issues, such as irreparable harm and commercial success.

Bathsheba Philpott

With a prestigious career of more than 20 years in nonprofit fundraising development, Bathsheba Philpott has served within local and national organizations in the environmental, health care, public health, human services, advocacy, arts, international affairs, and higher education sectors. She has significant experience working to raise corporate, foundation, and government grants and sponsorships, as well as individual charitable contributions, having secured more than $80M throughout her career. Bathsheba has served in senior advancement roles as vice president of philanthropy at National Medical Fellowships and vice president of advancement at the American Council on Education (ACE), the major coordinating body for the nation’s colleges and universities. Bathsheba is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) and received the Grant Professional Certified credential from the Grant Professionals Certification Institute. She has a Graduate Certificate in Public Health from the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University, an Executive Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Maryland Global Campus.

Nancy Waymack

Nancy Waymack is the Director of Partnerships and Policy for the National Student Support Accelerator at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Prior to this role, she served as a senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and an education policy consultant. Nancy was also the Managing Director of District Policy at the National Council on Teacher Quality. She spent a decade at the San Francisco Unified School District, where she served as the Executive Director for Policy and Operations. Prior to moving to San Francisco, Nancy was the Assistant Budget Director at the District of Columbia Public Schools and an elementary school teacher in Houston.

Eric Goldstein

CEO & Founder

Eric founded the program as a classroom teacher at SEED Public Charter School in Anacostia and has run the organization ever since. His career in education started after a solo, 5,000-mile bicycle trip across the United States. As a teacher, Eric earned a United States Department of the Interior Partners in Education Award. Eric holds a Master’s in Education from the University of Vermont and Master’s in International Policy from George Washington University.