As an Executive Director for Teach for America (TFA), community advocate, and Certified Professional Coach, Anajah Roberts is driving transformation in education across the Chicagoland area – and beyond.
With over 12 years of professional experience leading classrooms, communities, and coalitions, Roberts is changing how education is experienced and who is experiencing it.
Inspired by her time as a TFA corp member and St. Louis middle school teacher, Roberts understands the impact equity can have on self-determination and personal fulfillment first-hand. And she has committed her career to securing equitable access to opportunities, tools, and resources for students and educators ever since.
Roberts has quickly expanded her impact throughout her over ten years of leadership at TFA. From guiding professional leadership and development to managing the teacher corp and directing TFA’s critical Chicago and Northwest Indiana region, Roberts is creating space for diverse perspectives to best contribute to the non-profit’s aligned vision.
Her human-centric approach to leadership, combined with her bold, joyful demeanor, inspires how she leads. And her vision and desire to increase representation in leadership inform who follows.
Her own personal experience navigating the educational system in her hometown of Chicago and being recruited to Indiana as a high school Posse Scholar has made her believe that culturally aware and ‘experience-aware’ teaching and learning opportunities are the keys to growth and development.
And her Master’s degree in Secondary Education and Teaching, paired with her Bachelor’s degree in Political Science, have sparked her desire for non-profit and policy work to evolve education beyond traditional models.
Roberts believes that by eliminating the barriers impacting how we learn and who we learn from, that culturally-competent communities will emerge, individual potential can be realized, and collective liberation is possible.
Speaking Topics:
- Infusing equity in education for students and educators
- Transforming the educational system through community-centric innovation
- Why systemic change in education starts at the community level
- How to work across lines of difference and increase representation in education
