Employees executive management »
Kristen Amundson
President/CEO

Sharon Cannon
Director of Operations

Kimberly Charis
Director of School Climate, Discipline, and Equity

Winona Hao
Director of Early Learning

Robert Hull
Executive Vice President

Don Long
Director of Teaching, Leading, and Learning
Don Long is director of teaching, leading, and learning and has over 20 years of experience in K-12 education policy, advocacy, administration, and research at the national, state, and local levels. Long has devoted his career, which spans public education, labor, welfare, and economic policy, to addressing issues of equity and excellence, poverty, and broadly shared prosperity. Most recently, he served as senior policy analyst with the Campaign for High School Equity, a coalition of civil rights organizations brought together to strengthen the civil rights voice in federal and state education policy. He began his career as a researcher in policy development and program evaluation at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources, University of Texas at Austin, where he studied high-performance work organization, comprehensive school reform, professional learning systems for leaders and teachers, and school-to-career issues. He went on to manage the student assessment and planning & evaluation divisions at the Texas Education Agency. Long came to Washington, D.C., as program director of the Statewide Collaboratives on Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS) at the Council of Chief State School Officers, where he supported state leadership and innovation in balanced assessment and accountability systems for improving learning and teaching. He also has consulted for the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education on “whole student” education, teacher evaluation, and full-service community schools. He holds a bachelor’s in history from the University of Virginia and a master’s from the L.B.J. School of Public Affairs.
Sarah-Jane Lorenzo
Research Associate
Sarah-Jane Lorenzo is a research associate at NASBE's Center for College, Career, and Civic Readiness, where she studies trends in state board policy action. She has a research background and enjoys working on projects that promote public awareness of how schools can help students build successful post-secondary plans. Before joining NASBE, Lorenzo worked at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, where she helped produce the 2016 Forbes College Rankings and led a national survey exploring faculty dedication to student service and mentoring responsibilities at top-tier versus lower tier liberal arts colleges.
Lorenzo studies journalism and education policy at Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College, where she expects to earn her degree in 2017. She is an active journalist and has published investigative articles on issues including standardized testing, academic tracking, and discipline in schools.
Valerie Norville
Editorial Director

Abigail Potts
Director of College, Career, and Civic Readiness
Abigail Potts is the NASBE's director of college, career, and civic readiness. Potts brings over 10 years of experience in federal and state education policy along with a passion for data and educational equity. She previously served as a research scientist at the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). At NCES, she worked in partnership with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to administer the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The CRDC provides wide-ranging data on educational access and opportunity covering topics such as early childhood education, college and career readiness, resource equity, and bullying and harassment. Potts has also served as an independent consultant providing technical assistance and policy analysis and as a senior policy advisor within the US Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education working on assessment and accountability issues. Her first job in education was at the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) reporting on education indicators and state education policies. Potts attended public school in Alexandria, Virginia, and currently resides in Alexandria’s Del Ray neighborhood.
Renée Rybak Lang
Communications Director

Most recently, Lang was communications manager of Education Sector, where she developed integrated communications strategies to reach policymakers and other key audiences and established the think tank’s award-winning social media and web presence. Prior to this, she was special projects coordinator for the 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and served as an aide to New York State Senator George Maziarz, where she worked on constituent issues and legislation. Born and raised in western New York, Lang is a graduate of Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y., where she studied political science.
Michael Spaeth
Communications Associate
Michael Spaeth, communications associate, plays an integral role in promoting NASBE’s work to journalists, thought leaders, stakeholders in the education sector, and members of state boards of education. Spaeth manages NASBE’s social media efforts, tracks NASBE’s impact, monitors education news and media activity, and helps execute other forms of outreach.
Before joining NASBE’s team, Spaeth was a field organizer with the Pennsylvania Democratic Coordinated Campaign in Pittsburgh. He also worked as a Jewish Service Corps (Avodah) member at The ARK, a nonprofit social service agency that serves low-income individuals in Chicago’s Jewish community. He interned for Congressmen Dan Kildee and Sander Levin’s Washington, D.C. offices, Congressman Brad Schneider's 2016 campaign, U.S. Senator Gary Peters’s 2014 campaign, and at the Stimson Center, a global security think tank. Spaeth led and assisted with creative writing workshops for elementary and middle school students at the nonprofit youth writing centers 826CHI and 826michigan, and he was a workshop facilitator at a juvenile detention center as part of the University of Michigan's Prison Creative Arts Project. He received a B.A. with distinction in political science and communication studies from the University of Michigan, where he also undertook research projects on education issues.