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Audience in Lecture

FELLOW

HARRIS FERRELL

DIRECTORY |  FELLOW PROFILE

HARRIS FERRELL

TITLE 

Chief Executive Officer

ORGANIZATION

APDS

BIOGRAPHY

Harris is currently the Chief Executive Officer at APDS, a public-benefit company and certified B-corp which aims to eliminate the cycle of incarceration by preparing every justice-impacted individual for living-wage employment. Harris Ferrell has spent most of his professional career scaling early-stage to mid-sized education companies (for-profit and not-for-profit). Prior to ADPS, Harris was the Chief Operating Officer at Achievement First – a high-performing network of public charter schools in New York City, Connecticut, and Rhode Island – where he was on the executive team for 10+ years and played a leadership role in growing Achievement First's network of schools from 2500 students to well over 14,000 students. Prior to Achievement First, Harris was a co-founder and Senior Vice President of AdvancePath Academics, a company that designed and operated drop-out recovery academies on behalf of school districts. Harris went to Yale as an undergraduate and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He has worked in education in many different facets: he was a classroom teacher through Teach For America in Houston, designed education software as Director of Product Management at SchoolNet, and has been an investor in educational ventures as an Associate Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund.

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