I love Sangari Science classes because we learn in a very fun way. We learn by doing, not just by reading books.

Christopher Cerf is currently CEO of Sangari Global Education, which offers innovative education programming to over 500,000 students worldwide. He previously served as senior campaign advisor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Between 2004 and 2009, he was Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education where his portfolio included organizational strategy, external relations (press, communications, politics, etc.), innovation and R&D, and all aspects of human capital. In that capacity, he oversaw labor relations and all matters pertaining to recruiting, supporting, developing and evaluating the nearly 80,000 teachers and 1450 principals who work in the DOE. Previously, he was a partner in the Public Private Strategy Group, which advises school districts pursuing comprehensive reform strategies. In that role, he served for a year as New York City Chancellor Joel Klein’s Chief Advisor on Transformation. As part of that effort, he built and managed a team of external experts and internal managers charged with (1) re-visioning the financial and organizational structure of the nation’s largest school district (1450 schools, serving 1.1 million children with an annual operating budget of $20 billion) and (2) working closely with the same team to implement the new design.

Mr. Cerf served for eight years as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Edison Schools, Inc, the nation's largest private-sector manager of public schools, operating 150 schools in 19 states and providing other educational services in an additional 700 schools in both the U.S. and Great Britain. He earlier served as Associate Counsel to President Clinton and as a partner in two Washington, D.C., law firms. Mr. Cerf is a graduate of Amherst College and Columbia Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review, and served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Prior to attending law school, he spent four years as a high school history teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Cerf graduated from the Broad Urban Superintendents Academy in 2004.

Rajeev Bajaj is Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Sangari Education. Prior to joining Sangari, Rajeev was the founder and principal of Kitamba, Inc an education consulting firm focused on performance management, education technology, and system-wide reform in school districts and educational organizations around the country. He began his career in education over 9 years ago as an elementary school teacher in Harlem and transitioned to key leadership roles at the New York City Department of Education. Rajeev most recently served as a Managing Director in the Office of Accountability of the New York City Department of Education where he was responsible for spearheading the efforts to develop the first district-wide comprehensive accountability and data management system. Rajeev has held multiple policy and operations roles within the New York City Department of Education including Chief of Staff for the Office of Accountability, Director of New School Facilities and Real Estate and Development, and Special Assistant to the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. Prior to Rajeev’s roles at the central office, he was an integrated technology teacher at P.S. 161 in Central Harlem where he facilitated all grant and partnership development opportunities for P.S. 161 resulting in over $250,000 grants and in-kind services. Rajeev is a graduate of Northwestern University with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering/Management Sciences and a background in strategic marketing and business development. He also holds a Master’s in Education with a focus on urban education reform from Hunter College in New York City. Prior to moving to New York City to participate in the Teaching Fellows program, Rajeev worked for Microsoft Corporation in Seattle where he managed strategic enterprise accounts and then helped launch Jamcracker, Inc., a Silicon-Valley based web-services provider. Rajeev is a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, through the Fulbright Memorial Fund-Japan and has also worked on a non-profit Microcredit initiative in India. As a contributor to the ongoing dialogue on digital equity, Rajeev was a speaker at the 2003 Beaumont Foundation Access for All Conference in Houston, Texas and has presented at multiple ProjectInkwell quarterly meetings.

John Penick has been a leading science educator for more than 35 years. He has served as President of the National Science Teachers Association, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and the Association for Science Teacher Education. He is the author of more than 240 books, monographs, and articles.

Larrie Reynolds was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Larrie attended college in the Oklahoma City area and fell in love with the people of the Midwest. He married his wife Sherri right after graduation and raised their three children in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. He began his professional life in the fulltime ministry (as a youth pastor) but quickly decided that his real passion was education. In 1981, he became a music teacher in Yukon, Oklahoma (a suburb of Oklahoma City). Four years later, he accepted a job as a high school principal in a small school in Osage County, Oklahoma. Larrie later moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma and served as an elementary school principal at the award-winning “Hilldale Elementary School” before starting a new “magnet school” program for the Wichita, Kansas public schools. During the 8 years spent in Wichita, he was tapped to launch the nation’s first “Edison School,” the Dodge-Edison Partnership Elementary School. Afterward, Larrie became an Assistant Superintendent in San Angelo, Texas, a district of just under 16,000 students. In the spring of 2000, spurred on by the relative lack of quality summer school programs in the Midwest, he founded Newton Learning, a summer and after school extended learning company. Six years later, the company had grown to over 12,000 employees, serving more than 75,000 boys and girls each year. In 2006, Larrie returned to public education and accepted the post as Superintendent of Schools in Pequannock, New Jersey. In late 2008 he was named the Superintendent of Mt. Olive, New Jersey and currently serves in that capacity and as a senior consultant to Sangari Education.

Dara Nadel graduated from McGill University with a major in finance and a minor in political science. Prior to her employment at Sangari, Dara worked in the financial sector as an analyst in Wealth Management at Citi and in the not-for-profit sector in various positions at the William J. Clinton Foundation, the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Jerusalem. Dara currently volunteers in New York City Public Schools to help young children of diverse backgrounds and academic abilities in the area of reading to increase literacy throughout New York.

Gerry Wheeler is a high school science teacher who went on to complete a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics, Dr. Wheeler has a long history of innovation and leadership in education. He hosted a TV science series for children, taught physics in several universities, and spent 12 years as Executive Director of the National Science Teachers Association. He currently represents the United States on the TIMMS 2011 science steering committee and chaired the NAEP 2009 framework steering committee. A former president of the American Association of Physics Teachers, Dr. Wheeler has served on the boards of many science, education, and technology organizations.

Ronald Bonstetter is a Professor of Science Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A former professional journal editor, he has been a visiting professor in Asia and Latin America and produced a variety of instructional materials (video to print). He has served on the boards of directors of eight professional organizations and has participated in the Gordon Conference as a Featured Lecturer. His current interest is in the applications of neuroscience to education.

Joseph Krajcik is the Associate Dean for Research and a Professor of Science Education and Educational Studies at the University of Michigan. A former president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, he was recently recognized with the 2010 Award for Outstanding Contributions to Science Education Through Research. A fellow of the American Educational Research Association, Dr. Krajcik has been a visiting professor in Israel, China, and Korea, most recently focusing on applications of digital technologies in education.

Ben Sangari is the chairman and chief executive officer of Sangari Group. Prior to assuming the role of CEO in 1988, Ben acted as President of Compete Ltd., an educational and technology producers consortium in England and of A.B. Sangari & Sons Ltd. in Greece. In 2003, Ben launched the Sangari International Institute, a non-profit organization. Through partnerships with the American Museum of Natural History and the National Science Teachers Association in the U.S., the Institute promotes scientific literacy for all citizens through free educational exhibits across the North and South America. He is a physicist with a degree from Kings College at London University and studied business administration and finance at the London Business School.

Vice-President of Sangari Brazil and President of Sangari Argentina since 2009, Jorge Werthien has a doctorate in education from Stanford University, a Masters degree in Communication and Education from Stanford University and Bachelors degree in sociology from University of California, Berkeley.

Werthein has more than thirty years of experience in projects and programs in areas of education, social development, communication and community participation in several South American countries.

Werthein has previously served as a specialist in Rural Education at the Inter-American Institute of Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and
was responsible for the Institute's social programs in Brazil 1977 to 1986, when he became Director of External Relations, based in Costa Rica, for another eight years.

He began his career with the United Nations (UN) in 1994, as Director of the UNESCO Offices in New York and Washington, and from 1996 to 2005 he served as Director and representative of UNESCO in Brazil. Following UNESCO, Werthein served for two years as special advisor on Latin America to the Secretary General of Organization of Ibero-American States to Education, Science and Culture (OEI).

In 2007 Dr. Werthein accepted the role of Executive Director of the Latin American Technological Information Network (RITLA) an international organization for technical partnership between Latin-American countries to strengthen the regional capacity for integrating information and communication technologies. Dr. Werthein has published 15 books and many scientific articles in his field, Dr. Werthein is a member of the following institutions: Administrative Council of Instituto Fraterna, Consultative Council of the Roberto Marinho Foundation, Committee of the Society and Technology Center of the University of San Andres (Argentina), and of the Editorial College of the publication “Communication and Politics”, Deliberative Council of the Solitary Literacy Association (ALFASOL).

Inés Dussel

Inés Dussel is the Director of Sangari Argentina. She is also an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education of the University of San Andres in Argentina, and is a researcher in Education at The Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLASCO), where she served as Director of Education from 2001 to 2008.

Recently Ines’s work focuses on using technology and new media in education with a grant from the Spencer Foundation, DAAD, the Georg-Eckert-Institute in Germany, and the University of Buenos Aires. She has consulted for BID, OEA, UNESCO Brasil, Santillana Foundation, the Ministry of Education of Argentina, and several provincial secretariats of education throughout Argentina. Ines teaches social sciences for Masters and Doctoral students at FLASCO and Educational Management Masters students at the University of San Andres. She has guest lectured at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, The National Pedagogical University of Mexico, the ARCIS University of Chile, and the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, among others. She has written and edited nine books and has more than 70 articles and book chapters in national and international publications. She is co-director, together with Luis Alberto Quevedo, of the Education, Images and Media program at FLASCO.

Ines received her Bachelors degree in Education Science from the University of Buenos Aires, Masters in Social Sciences from FLASCO, and Doctorate from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.