Board of Directors 

Vanessa Bangser Vanessa is a Managing Director at LeveragED Foundation, which invests in the success
of educational leadership, connects education leaders to each other, and amplifies
brilliant ideas. At LeveragED, she provides executive coaching to school and district
leaders across the country, brings them together through the facilitation of cohorts,
professional development sessions and hosted events, and connects them with vetted
opportunities through elite institutions. She was selected as a member of Harvard
Graduate School of Education's 2020 Women in Leadership  Cohort and in August of
2022 she was the guest speaker for the launch of the National Association of
Elementary School Principals (NAESP)’s Center for Women in Leadership.

Vanessa began her education career as a special education teacher in the Bronx and
went on to win Teach for America's Sue Lehman Award–their national teacher of the
year recognition. After working as a teacher and leader at P.S. 42 and then as an
Assistant Principal in Harlem, she was the founding principal of Success Academy
Bronx 2, which was recognized for both academics (in the top 1% in New York State)
and culture (as the first Bronx school to win a Blackboard award). Most recently before
joining LeverageED, she was Managing Director for Elementary Schools at KIPP NYC. 

In addition to her work in education, Vanessa has spent the past decade as a
therapeutic foster parent for adolescents in the Bronx, where she is currently mother to
two foster daughters and has two more daughters who she morally adopted after they
aged out of the system.