Martha Kanter leads College Promise, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative to increase college access, affordability, quality, and completion in American higher education. She is also a senior fellow at New York University’s Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy. She specializes in policy efforts to identify and apply innovative, evidence-based education interventions, financing models, and behavioral incentives to raise America’s high school and college graduation rates. From 2009 to 2013, Kanter served as the US under secretary of education, overseeing all federal postsecondary statutory, regulatory, and administrative policies and programs, including the $175B annual federal student-aid programs, higher education, adult education, career-technical education, international education, and six White House initiatives. From 1993 to 2009, she was president of De Anza College and then chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District in Silicon Valley, California. She began her career as an alternative high school teacher in Lexington, Massachusetts. Kanter holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Brandeis University, an M.Ed. from Harvard University, and an Ed.D. from the University of San Francisco.