Brian Bauer is the founding CEO/Superintendent of Granada Hills Charter, an independent public school serving approximately 6,500 grades TK-12 students located in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Mr. Bauer began his career at Granada in 2000 as the school's principal, and led the School?s successful conversion to an independent charter school in 2003. Granada Hills Charter is one of the largest charter schools in the nation with a diverse student population that includes 60 nationalities and 40 languages represented in its families and with an annual wait list of more than 4,000 students. Mr. Bauer began his teaching career in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1991, teaching ESL, English, and Spanish at Bell and Manual Arts High Schools, and then as an assistant principal at Locke and Franklin High Schools. Mr. Bauer served on the California State Board of Education?s Advisory Commission on Charter Schools (ACCS) from 2007 to 2018, and as its chair since 2009. He joined the CCSA Board of Directors in 2013, was chair of CCSA?s Member Council from 2010-2013, and since its founding in 2012 he has been chair of the CEO Council of the LAUSD Charter Operated Programs for Special Education. He received his BA from Yale College, a MS from CSU Dominguez Hills and UCLA, and is completing his PhD in Education Policy at UCLA. Between his teaching and school administration assignments, Mr. Bauer spent nearly three years in Colombia, South America as a Fulbright Scholar, and during the 2007 summer, led an educational leadership project in Brazil as Fulbright Fellow. In 2008, Mr. Bauer was named California's Charter Leader of the Year. Mr. Bauer serves as a trustee on several education, community service, and family philanthropic boards, including Great Public Schools Now (GPSN) and Excellence in Education (ExEd). He presently resides in Los Angeles. In his "free" time, he enjoys playing paddle tennis and stand up paddle boarding, preparing and eating vegan food, and traveling the world.