Douglas Wood

Program Officer, Youth Opportunity and Learning, Ford Foundation

New York City

Douglas Wood works on higher education issues, with an emphasis on the needs of students from poor and marginalized communities in the United States. His grant making focuses on helping students transition from high school to college and improving the college completion rates of underserved students. He brings to this position broad experience in PK-12, as well as higher education policy and administration. Prior to joining the foundation in 2011, Douglas was associate dean of administration and planning at the Eugene Lang College of the New School for Liberal Arts. During the 10 years before coming to the foundation, he also worked as executive director and chief executive officer of the Tennessee State Board of Education; served as a member of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission; and was executive director and principal investigator of the National Academy for Excellent Teaching, an institute of the Teachers College, Columbia University.

Douglas began his career as a public school teacher. After five years of teaching, he worked as a research assistant at Harvard University, the Center for Collaborative Education-Metro Boston and the Annenberg Rural Challenge, among others. He then served as a course assistant at Harvard's JFK School of Government and a teaching fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. Douglas holds an Ed.D and an Ed.M in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University, a master's degree in English from Middlebury College and a bachelor's degree in history from Wofford College, where he is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.