Our Leaders
Success Academy Charter Schools is led by a group of dedicated individuals who are committed to redefining what’s possible in public education. Our leaders are passionate about education, change and the children we serve. Collectively, our leaders have backgrounds in both business and education so that we can deliver an exceptional education to children through schools that are run effectively and efficiently.
Two groups of leaders help set the strategy for and guide our organization: the management team and our Board of Directors.
Leadership Bios
Eva Moskowitz, Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Eva Moskowitz founded Success Academy Charter Schools in 2006. As a teacher, college professor, former elected official, New York City Council Education Committee Chair and public school parent, Eva Moskowitz has enormous experience in public education.
As Chair of the New York City Council's Education Committee, Eva Moskowitz spent seven years investigating every conceivable topic related to quality public education. She held more than 125 hearings and wrote an extensive set of reports that received national recognition for their in-depth and honest, sometimes brutal, examination of every aspect of teaching and learning.
The New York Times wrote of Moskowitz "...those who make and critique education policy rarely trade in their gavels for daily work with real children in real schools. This is the woman who, during four years of running the City Council Education Committee, agitated the bureaucracy and the teachers' union alike with exhaustive hearings on the dearth of science classes, the restrictions of the union contract and, famously, the matter of why so many school bathrooms seemed perpetually to lack toilet paper. Now, with the zeal of a bureaucracy-busting superhero, Ms. Moskowitz has channeled her interests in matters mind-bending and minute into the Success Charter Network."
Eva Moskowitz attended Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and holds a Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University. After completing her education, Moskowitz was a professor at Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia and the City University of New York. Before running for public office in 1997, Moskowitz also taught civics at Prep for Prep, a program for gifted underprivileged children in New York.
Keri Hoyt, Chief Operating Officer
Before joining Success Academy Charter Schools in June 2009, Keri was a Vice President at The Princeton Review, where she worked for 18 years in various roles throughout the organization including Vice President of Product and Marketing and Associate Vice President of Admissions Services. Keri holds a BA in English from The University of New Hampshire and an MBA from Wharton.
Shannon Kete, Senior Managing Director, Operations
Before joining Success Academy Charter Schools in 2011, Shannon was the Chief Operating Officer of PLTW, a project-based, STEM curriculum organization serving over 4,000 schools nationwide. She previously worked in education as part of the NYCDOE's Children First implementation team. Shannon has also worked extensively in finance, most recently as the Chief of Staff for U.S. Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs. Shannon has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Latin American Studies and Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Board of Director Bios
Joel Greenblatt
Joel Greenblatt is a Managing Partner of Gotham Capital, a hedge fund that he founded in 1985. He has been a Professor since 1996 on the adjunct faculty of Columbia Business School, where he teaches Value and Special Situation Investing. Mr. Greenblatt is the former Chairman of the Board of Alliant Techsystems, a NYSE-listed aerospace and defense company. In addition to being Chairman of Success Academy Charter Schools, he is also Chairman of Success Academy Harlem 1’s Board of Directors. Mr. Greenblatt is the author of three books, You Can Be A Stock Market Genius (Simon & Schuster, 1997), The Little Book That Beats the Market (John Wiley & Sons, 2005) and The Big Secret for the Small Investor (Crown Business, 2011). Mr. Greenblatt holds a BS and an MBA from the Wharton School.
John Petry
John Petry is the founder and managing principal at Sessa Capital. Previously he was a partner at Gotham Capital and Gotham Asset Management and a co-founder of the Value Investors Club (valueinvestorsclub.com). John graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. John has been active in a variety of education reform causes. He was a co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform and served as past Chairman of Education Reform Now, organizations that are dedicated to reforming education policy both nationally and locally. He was a founding member of the Board of Trustees of Success Academy Harlem 1 and Success Academy Harlem 4.
Gideon Stein
Gideon Stein is the co-founder and President of Future Is Now Schools, a national non-profit focused on building sustainable school models. Mr. Stein is also a partner with Argyle Holdings LLC, a real estate development company in Northern Manhattan. Previously, Mr. Stein was the Chairman and CEO of Omnipod, Inc., an enterprise software firm that was sold in 2005 to MessageLabs, a global software-as-service firm that is now a division of Symantec. Before Omnipod/MessageLabs, Mr. Stein founded several start-up companies including a consumer magazine that was sold to E! Entertainment Television and Interpublic Group of Companies. Mr. Stein is the Chairman of the Board of New York City Common Communities and the Tapestry Project. In addition, he serves on the boards of Success Academy Harlem 5, Success Academy Upper West and the Moriah Fund, and is a member of the International Council and Investment Committee of the New Israel Fund. Mr. Stein graduated with honors from Wesleyan University.
Mary G. Berner
Ms. Mary G. Berner serves as the President & CEO, MPA, of the Association of Magazine Media. Ms. Berner has extensive global experience in both publicly traded and private companies ranging in size from less than ten million to more than three billion in revenue. With deep expertise in multi-channel and multi-platform marketing, media, and brand building, as well as direct marketing, she has led, built and transformed some of the largest and most successful consumer and B2B media companies and brands in the world including Glamour, TV Guide, W, Women’s Wear Daily, Details, Brides, The Family Handyman, allrecipes.com, Every Day with Rachael Ray and the Reader’s Digest Association. Ms. Berner has served on numerous not-for-profit and industry boards including the Partnership for Drug-Free America, Magazine Publisher’s Association, Advertising Women of New York, College of the Holy Cross Communications Council, and was the Founder and Chair of the St Pius V High School Fundraising Initiative in the South Bronx for over twenty years. She currently serves as a Director of ABM Research, Success Academies Charter Schools in NYC and is a member of the Media and Technology Council for Springboard Enterprises.
Jay Bryant
Jay Bryant is a Managing Director at BlueMountain Capital Management in the Investor Relations and Marketing team focusing on pension and endowment clients. Mr. Bryant joined the firm from Deutsche Bank in the new issue CDO Group where he was responsible for the global distribution of cash loan-backed CDO liabilities and equity, including BlueMountain's third CLO. Before his tenure at Deutsche, Mr. Bryant spent nearly 10 years at Merrill Lynch in various credit derivative marketing roles, focused on cash and synthetic structured credit. Mr. Bryant holds an MBA from Columbia University and is an honors graduate of Harvard College.
Steven M. Galbraith
Prior to forming Herring Creek Capital in November 2012, Steve Galbraith was a Partner at Maverick Capital where he had portfolio and general management responsibilities and Chaired the firm’s Advisory Committee. Before joining Maverick in 2004, Mr. Galbraith was the Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Stanley where he was the top ranked investment strategist on Wall Street in the annual Institutional Investor research poll in 2002 and 2003. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he was a Partner at Sanford Bernstein where he was a highly ranked analyst in the packaged goods industry and the financial services sector. From 1998 to 2008, Mr. Galbraith was an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Business School, where he taught securities analysis.
Mr. Galbraith serves on the Board of Trustees of Tufts University and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and the Board of Directors of Narragansett Brewing Company, Pzena Investment Management and the Success Charter Network. Mr. Galbraith was recently appointed by the U.S. Treasury as an Advisor to the Financial Research Group. He received his BA (summa cum laude) from Tufts University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
Mr. Galbraith’s humbling professional experiences include being named one of the most influential people on Wall Street while at Morgan Stanley despite the fact he did not rank in the top three in his own family (of four).
David Greenspan
David Greenspan is Founder and President of Slate Path Capital, a New York based global investment firm. He founded the firm in 2012. Prior to Slate Path, Mr. Greenspan was partner and managing director at Blue Ridge Capital in New York. He joined Blue Ridge in 2000, the same year he graduated from Columbia Business School. Prior to attending Columbia, Mr. Greenspan was a CPA and consultant with Price Waterhouse in Washington DC. In addition to his MBA from Columbia, Mr. Greenspan earned an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from George Mason University in 1993.
Mr. Greenspan is a member of the Columbia University Business School Board of Overseers. For the past nine years, he has been an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School where he teaches Advanced Investment Research. He serves on the advisory board of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School.
Mr. Greenspan is a member of the board of directors of the Success Academy Charter Schools and was a founding member of the board of trustees of Success Academy Harlem 4. He is a founding board member of the Josh Waitzkin Learning Foundation (JWF).
Kevin Hall
Kevin Hall is the President and CEO of the Charter School Growth Fund. Mr. Hall joined CSGF in July 2009 to lead CSGF through the process of developing its new strategic plan, refining its investment strategies and launching Fund II. Before joining CSGF, Mr. Hall served as the Chief Operating Officer of The Broad Foundation for several years where he led various aspects of the Foundation's grant investment strategy and work. Prior to Broad, he was a co-founder and ran business development for Chancellor Beacon Academies, a manager of charter and private schools across the U.S. Previously, Mr. Hall ran a division of infoUSA, and worked at McKinsey & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Teach For America. Mr. Hall was an elementary school teacher and teaching fellow at Harvard University, and earned his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and B.A. from Swarthmore College.
W. Yen Liow
Yen Liow is a Principal of Ziff Brothers Investments (ZBI), the primary investment vehicle of the Ziff family and related entities, and a Managing Director and Sector Head of ZBI Equities, ZBI’s public equity investment fund. Mr. Liow is responsible for the firm’s global investments in energy, telecommunications, internet, media, and agricultural commodities. He is a founding board member of the JW Foundation and an advisor to Dr. Atul Gawande’s Global Healthcare Initiative. Mr. Liow is a regular guest lecturer at Columbia Business School and teaches a field study at Harvard Business School.Mr. Liow is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, Australia and Harvard Business School. He and his wife live in Manhattan with their two children and two West Highland white terriers.
Daniel S. Loeb
Daniel S. Loeb is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Third Point LLC, a $12 billion event--driven hedge fund headquartered in New York, where he leads portfolio management, risk management and research activities.
Before founding Third Point, Mr. Loeb was Vice--President of high--yield bond sales at Citigroup. Previously, he was a Senior Vice--President in the distressed debt department at Jefferies & Co., where he worked as a bankruptcy analyst, bank loan trader, and distressed securities salesman. Before joining Jefferies, he was a risk arbitrage Analyst at Lafer Equity Investors. He began his career as an Associate in private equity at Warburg Pincus.
Mr. Loeb sits on the Board of Yahoo! Inc. He is a Trustee of Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Manhattan Institute, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Enterprise Institute’s National Council. Mr. Loeb was recognized by Governor Andrew Cuomo for his role in advocating for Marriage Equality legislation in New York State in 2011.
Mr. Loeb graduated from Columbia University with an A.B. in economics in 1983. In 2012, he was honored by Columbia with the John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement. He has endowed the Daniel S. Loeb Scholarship for undergraduate study there. Since 2004, Mr. Loeb has been a trustee of Prep for Prep, a NYC organization that prepares underprivileged children to attend competitive independent schools. He is also involved in the Jewish Enrichment Center, which provides Jewish education to young New Yorkers. Mr. Loeb is engaged with New York City’s Success Academy Charter Schools, where he is the Founding Chairman of three schools located in Brooklyn, and he is a Co-- Founder of Students First New York, the state branch of the national education advocacy organization led by former Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Richard S. Pzena
Rich Pzena is the Founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer and a member of the Executive Committee of Pzena Investment Management. He is the architect of the firm’s investment strategy and conceived and developed the firm’s proprietary screening model. Prior to forming Pzena Investment Management in 1995, Rich was the Director of U.S. Equity Investments and Chief Research Officer for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. Mr. Pzena joined Bernstein in 1986 as an oil industry analyst and was named to the Institutional Investor All America Research Team from 1988-1990. During 1990 and 1991, Mr. Pzena served as Chief Investment Officer, Small Cap Equities, and assumed his broader domestic equity role in 1991. Prior to joining Bernstein, he worked for the Amoco Corporation in various financial and planning roles. Mr. Pzena earned a BS summa cum laude and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1979 and 1980, respectively.
In addition to his academic and business accomplishments, Mr. Pzena was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from Hebrew University in June of 2007 in recognition of his efforts in continuing adult Jewish education through their Meah program. He now sits on the advisory committee of Con-Text and the investment committee of the UJA Federation, as well as the Board of Trustees for ECLC of NJ (non-profit organization providing programs for adults with disabilities). Mr. Pzena is a benefactor of educational endeavors for families with autistic children both through UJA and the Montclair State College Children’s Center. He also serves on the board for the Harlem Success Academy Charter School 2 and the Success Charter Network, and serves as Chair of the Board for Assura Group of NY Ltd., a privately held insurance-related company. Mr. Pzena is a certified pilot. He enjoys spending time with his family, scuba diving and flying.
John H. Scully
John Scully is a founding partner of SPO Partners & Co., a private investment firm. Mr. Scully is also a director of Plum Creek Timber Company and chairman of the board of Advent Software, both public companies. Both Mr. Scully and his wife, Regina Scully, have demonstrated their commitment to expanding access to quality education by launching and overseeing the California charter network Making Waves Academy and Making Waves Education Program. In addition to serving on the Making Waves board, Mr. Scully and his wife support education reform through participation on the Success Academy Charter Schools network board. Mr. Scully formerly served as a Princeton University trustee and finance committee chair, and as a vice chair and trustee of the Stanford University Board of Trustees.
Mr. Scully began his investing career after receiving his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1968 and his A.B. from Princeton University in 1966. He has six children and five grandchildren ages one to six, enjoys swimming workouts, is a limited partner in the San Francisco Giants baseball team and is a student of twentieth century history.
Regina Kulik Scully
Regina Kulik Scully is a premier public relations and brand marketing expert and founder of Rpr Marketing Communications. Throughout Ms. Scully’s career, she has represented some of the top Fortune 500 companies, leading the PR programs for companies such as Christian Dior, L’Oreal, Neutrogena, Polo.com, LVMH and Johnson & Johnson.
Both Ms. Scully and her husband, John Scully, have demonstrated their commitment to expanding access to quality education by launching and overseeing the California charter network Making Waves Academy. In addition to serving on the Making Waves board, Ms. Scully and her husband promote education reform on the Success Academy Charter Schools network board and on Stanford University governing boards. Ms. Scully also serves on the boards of the Horace Mann School, Georgetown University Board of Regents, the Stanford University Board of Philanthropy and Civic Society, MissRepresentation.org, Project ALS, and Eve Ensler’s Vday – a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls.
Ms. Scully’s interest in media and education has additionally led her to pursue documentary production, having recently served as the Executive Producer of several films exploring critical social issues such as the devastating effects of child abuse (Boyhood Shadows, 2008), the role of media representations in damaging the self-esteem of young girls and women (MissRepresentation, 2011) and most recently, the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the U.S. military (The Invisible War, 2012). Ms Scully is also founder and CEO of Artemis Media Ventures.
Kent A. Yalowitz
Kent A. Yalowitz is a litigation partner at Arnold & Porter LLP, where he has practiced for 23 years. He received a BA from Yale College and a JD from Columbia Law School. Before entering private practice, Mr. Yalowitz served as a law clerk for Judge Edmund L. Palmieri of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. His practice is broad-based: he has conducted trials and argued appeals for a wide variety of domestic and international corporate and sovereign clients in matters involving business disputes, civil and criminal tax controversies, labor and employment disputes, creditors' rights, government contracts, antitrust, securities fraud, hostile takeover litigation, product liability, and governmental investigations. Mr. Yalowitz successfully defended Success Academy Charter School – Cobble Hill this past year in a teacher's union-driven litigation seeking to prevent the school from opening.
