Beth Heaton Seling, Chief Operating Officer
Mrs. Seling brings 10 years of charter sector experience to the 4.0 team. Most recently, she acted as an independent consultant supporting high quality charter schools and organizations in New Orleans and nationwide. She led engagements with clients on strategic planning, capacity building, authorizer development, and school- and organization-level evaluation. Beth was the Senior Director of Recruitment and Selection for Chicago Public Schools’ Office of New Schools. In this position, she directed the quality evaluation and selection of new charter and turnaround schools under Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 Chicago school reform initiative.
Beth worked for the KIPP Foundation for seven years, supporting the organization’s start-up and expansion as it grew from 2 flagship schools to 68 schools across the United States. At KIPP, she managed the development of new schools, recruitment of school leaders, and ‘trailblazing’ for KIPP in new markets across the nation. In 2006, after managing KIPP’s strategic growth throughout the Midwest United States for two years, she led the creation of a national Board development effort. Her work with KIPP Boards included intensive coaching and the execution of a Board governance curriculum. Beth graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in English.
Cambria Martinelli, Founding Associate
Ms. Martinelli joins the 4.0 team, to continue working in the New Orleans community as well as the greater Southeast region. Since 2007, she has been working with Rebuilding Together New Orleans (RTNO). Beginning as an AmeriCorps member and then joining the staff as the AmeriCorps Program Manager in 2008, she has managed over 100 AmeriCorps members during their term of service. Ms. Martinelli also served as RTNO’s logistics manager for over 30 ongoing construction projects and community events. Included in these events was Fifty for Five, RTNO’s 5th Anniversary of Katrina commemorative event, in which she coordinated logistics to host over 1,000 volunteers, sponsors, and staff on 50 projects over 4 days. Ms. Martinelli co-founded and co-directed the New Orleans AmeriCorps coalition and launched the first Life After AmeriCorps Conference, gathering over 300 service members from across Orleans and Jefferson Parish.
Prior to her work in New Orleans, Ms. Martinelli served as the Program Coordinator for UVA’s Leadership Development Center. She has also been a part of international development work including the creation of a youth leadership development curriculum for Ugandan orphanage, teaching English in Guatemala and working with a school in Haiti to teach sustainable agriculture. Ms. Martinelli graduated from Gordon College with a degree in Theology and minor in Communications.
Brian Bordainick, Director of Human Capital Investments
Brian Bordainick started his career in education through Teach For America, teaching 11th and 12th grade at Carver High School. During his second year teaching, bolstered by the support of the Carver community, Brian founded 9th Ward Field of Dreams to support the construction of a state-of-the-art football field and track on Carver's campus in the upper 9th ward. The organization has raised over $1.8M in less than two years. Since then, he has worked for the Mayor of New Orleans transitioning the recreation department of 102 employees out of City Hall to a public/private partnership, and piloted an education entrepreneurship program in partnership with 4.0, Teach For America, and the Idea Village. In the span of the six month pilot, over 50 TFA corps members and alumni received entrepreneurial training, 12 of which launched new ventures. Brian joins 4.0 as the Director of Human Capital Investments, cultivating talented entrepreneurs whose ideas will create the future of education, and expanding 4.0's work into new markets across the southeast United States.
Matt Candler, CEO
Mr. Candler, a veteran of the charter school movement is Founder of 4.0 Schools. After teaching and coaching middle school after college, Matt returned to his hometown to help run the main operations center for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. After the Games he studied decision sciences and the emerging charter sector at the Kellogg School of Management. He then served as founding co-principal of a K-8 charter school in North Carolina and helped launch other charter schools in the Southeast.
From 2001 to 2004, Matt served as KIPP Foundation’s Vice President of School Development, where his team established 37 new schools across the U.S. Matt later served as founding COO of the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, a $41 million effort to promote quality charter school creation. Most recently, Matt served New Schools for New Orleans as its first CEO and built a team whose human capital and school creation efforts have led to the most innovative and aggressive public school reforms in the nation. Matt continues to play an active role in Louisiana reform as chairman of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools and co-founder of the city-wide teacher support community closingthenolagap.org.
Beth Anderson
Beth Anderson is Senior Vice President of National Development for Teach for America; previously, she led Teach for America’s national foundation efforts. Prior to joining Teach For America, Beth was on the faculty at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where she was a lecturer and the cofounder and managing director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship, a research and education center dedicated to promoting the entrepreneurial pursuit of social impact through the thoughtful adaptation of business expertise.
Previously, she was a research associate at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation and a summer associate at McKinsey & Company. Her professional experience in the nonprofit sector includes working with the grassroots U.S. Olympic Movement and with an outdoor education center for people with disabilities. Anderson is a graduate of Williams College and Stanford Business School. She lives with her husband and son in Durham, NC, where she serves on the advisory board of Student U and as a strategic advisor to the Emily K Family Life Center.
Kenneth L. Campbell
Kenneth L. Campbell, a founding Board Member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), now serves as its President. Mr. Campbell served as Director of Charter Schools for the Louisiana Department of Education from 2007 to 2010, where he helped to create an environment where charter schools could grow and thrive in New Orleans and the rest of the state. Mr. Campbell, a strong advocate for high quality educational options for Black children, has worked to support the creation of high quality charter schools for more than 15 years. He was part of the initial effort to get one of the country’s best charter school laws passed in Washington, D.C., where he also created the D.C. Charter School Resource Center.
During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, Mr. Campbell helped to establish charter schools in urban areas across the country, working with Mosaica Education, Inc. Prior to his position with the Louisiana Department of Education, he spent almost four year years in Doha, Qatar, where he helped the country’s leadership in its efforts to convert its existing public schools into charter schools, as part of the most progressive school reform effort ever attempted in the Middle East. Mr. Campbell was a founding Board Member of Building Excellent Schools. Mr. Campbell served in the United States Army and retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a Captain in 2005. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Averett College in Virginia and a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership from Touro University International. He resides just outside Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his wife, Sheila and eleven-year-old son.
Matt Candler
Please see bio in Management.
Frederick M. Hess
Frederick M. Hess is resident scholar and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his Education Week blog “Rick Hess Straight Up”, he is the author of influential books on education including The Same Thing Over and Over, Education Unbound, Common Sense School Reform, Revolution at the Margins, and Spinning Wheels, as well as the co-editor of the new volume Stretching the School Dollar. His work has appeared in scholarly and popular outlets such as Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review, Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, American Politics Quarterly, Chronicle of Higher Education, Phi Delta Kappan, Educational Leadership, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, and National Review. He has edited widely-cited volumes on education philanthropy, urban school reform, the impact of education research, and No Child Left Behind.
Dr. Hess serves as executive editor of Education Next, as lead faculty member for the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program, on the Review Board for the Broad Prize in Urban Education, and on the Boards of Directors of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and the American Board for the Certification of Teaching Excellence. A former high school social studies teacher, he has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown University, Rice University, and Harvard University. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University as well as an M.Ed. in Teaching and Curriculum.
Alex Hernandez
Alex is a Partner and VP at the Charter School Growth Fund where he leads "next generation" CMO investments as well as those for portfolio members located in the Western US and Texas. Mr. Hernandez is a former Area Superintendent at Aspire Public Schools and joined CSGF in July 2010. Previous to managing Aspire's largest region, Mr. Hernandez worked with ICEF, a CMO in Los Angeles, and Portland Public Schools as a Broad Resident. Prior to that, Mr. Hernandez worked for several years with JP Morgan and Disney Ventures. He is a graduate of Claremont McKenna and has an MBA and Masters of Education from Stanford University.
James Eustis
Born and raised in New Orleans, James Eustis returned to the city in 2009. He graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in kinesiology. After getting his masters in sports management at California State-Long Beach, James hit the road for three years with the AVP, the professional beach volleyball circuit. He was a senior manager in both the sponsorship and event operations department, as well as creator & leader of their charity arm. In 2009 James co-founded Capdeville restaurant and is the managing partner. James serves as a frequent speaker at 4.0 Essentials events sharing lessons from the hospitality industry with aspiring educational entrepreneurs.
Our efforts would not be possible without the bold and visionary support of the Walton Family Foundation. In addition to Walton, the Charter School Growth Fund and the Center for Charter School Excellence in Tennessee have provided tremendous support to 4.0 Schools.
