In 1998, longtime public school educator (and now Deputy Director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) Don Shalvey joined forces with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Netflix founder Reed Hastings to launch Aspire Public Schools, one of the nation’s first charter management organizations. The mission Don and Reed set out to achieve was simple and straightforward, and it remains the same to this day.

Aspire’s mission is to open and operate small, high-quality charter schools in low-income neighborhoods, in order to:

• Increase the academic performance of underserved students
• Develop effective educators
• Share successful practices with other forward-thinking educators, and
• Catalyze change in public schools.