Ian has lived in Pelham with his wife Sylvia and their two children since 2012. He has served as a Trustee of the Pelham Board of Education since July 2021 and as Vice President of the Board since July 2022.
Ian is the Founder and CEO of Vertex Partnership Academies, a virtues-based International Baccalaureate public charter high school in the Bronx. Ian is also the Chairman of the Board of Spence-Chapin, a nonprofit adoption services organization and the Co-founder of the National Summer School Initiative.
Before leading public charter schools, he was Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ian won two Public Service “Emmy” Awards as Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs at MTV. Before MTV, Ian was Director of Strategy and Performance Measurement at the USA Freedom Corps office in the White House; and Co-founder and president of Third Millennium Media. Ian also joined Teach for America in its early days.
Ian is the author of “Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E) for All Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover their Pathway to Power” and frequently speaks on issues of upward mobility and education around the world. Ian is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and he concurrently serves as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Woodson Center. Ian is also frequently asked to participate or lead discussions on issues of critical importance to young people, such as this 2024 discussion Digital Distractions: The Case for Phone Free Schools, with author Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”.
Ian has been widely published in the popular press, including in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Post, National Review, Education Week, Education Next, and the Washington Examiner. In 2017, Black Enterprise Magazine named Ian one of its “100 Men of Distinction.” In 2019, the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association named Ian the recipient of the Bert King Award recognizing “exemplary service to the community and professional excellence.” In 2023, Ian received the George Sutherland Award, named in honor of a U.S. Supreme Court justice, whose life of public service was marked by his character, his respect for differing views, and his steadfast devotion to the constitutional guarantees of liberty. In 2024, the Greater New York Councils, Boy Scouts of America honored Ian as the 2024 recipient of the Harlem Good Scout Award.
Ian has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was the first black Editor-in-Chief of The Harbus, the Harvard Business School newspaper; a BS in Computer Science Engineering from Cornell University; and a diploma in Electrical Engineering from Brooklyn Technical High School (Brooklyn Tech), one of New York City’s elite public schools, which specializes in science, technology, and mathematics.