Shannah VarónSenior Fellow, Boston

Executive Director, Teach For America Massachusetts

Shannah Varón is the Executive Director of Teach For America Massachusetts, where she works to ensure that outstanding, equity-minded teachers are able to reach young people in 70 schools across Massachusetts. Prior to this role, Shannah served for ten years as the Executive Director of Boston Collegiate Charter School, a diverse, fifth through twelfth grade public school serving 700 students with the mission of preparing each student for college. In addition to her work at Boston Collegiate, Shannah has chaired the Boston Charter Alliance, the group of Boston’s 15 Commonwealth charter organizations, and served on the board of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. Shannah also co-chaired the Boston Compact, which is dedicated to collaboration across Boston’s charter public, district public, and Catholic schools. In addition, she served on the Regional Advisory Board of Teach For America Massachusetts and she enjoys other board service as well, including serving on the board of Transforming Education.

Prior to joining Boston Collegiate Charter School, Shannah was a principal with the Parthenon Group, a Boston-based strategy consulting firm, where she focused in the firm’s Education Center for Excellence and led projects on teacher effectiveness in New York City, Memphis, and Washington, DC. Shannah previously worked in New York City for Teach For America, where she co-managed the program team, which was responsible for 1,000 corps members across 300 city schools. She began her career in education teaching bilingual elementary special education in Mercedes, Texas, as a Teach For America Corps Member. Shannah holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University summa cum laude and an MBA from Harvard Business School with distinction. She lives in Milton, MA, with her husband and sons.