The Aspen Institute

Richard Gray serves as director of AISR’s Community Organizing & Engagement team. His work includes providing strategic support on community organizing and engagement to community and school reform organizations in cities across the country. He also directs AISR’s Center for Education Organizing, which helps expand the power of education organizing through building strategic alliances among organizations and with strategic partners such as teachers’ unions, reform support organizations, civil rights organizations, and research and policy institutes. Previously, he was director of national technical assistance with the Community Involvement Program at New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP), where he assisted community groups in New York City and across the country in developing strategies to improve local schools and shape more effective and equitable education policies. He was also co-executive director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students (NCAS), a nationwide network of child advocacy organizations that work to improve the access of quality public education to student populations who have traditionally been underserved by public schools. Richard received a BA in History from Brown University and a JD from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.