Speakers
Andrea S. Pursley
Executive director of the Sanford Education Project, Arizona State University
Andrea S. Pursley is the executive director of the Sanford Education Project at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Under her leadership, the Sanford Education Project is preparing to lead teacher candidates through a two-semester student teaching model based largely on Teach For America’s “Teaching As Leadership” framework, in which teacher candidates set, pursue, and achieve measurable goals for pre-K–8 students’ learning. Prior to joining the Sanford Education Project in 2010, Ms. Pursley worked as a Teach For America corps member and staff member for eight years. After teaching sixth grade in south Phoenix, she served as executive director of Teach For America’s Phoenix region. In that role, she increased the corps size from 150 to nearly 400 and increased the annual funding budget from $800,000 to over $6 million. She also built a new structure for school district partnerships and, in collaboration with pro-bono lobbyists, wrote, lobbied, and saw the passage of the first State Senate bill to provide financial support for a Teach For America region. Ms. Pursley also served in two national vice president roles with Teach For America from 2008 to 2010, as vice president for teacher support and development and vice president for regional operations.
