Liz Simons is chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation. A former teacher, Liz worked in Spanish-bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, and subsequently founded Stretch to Kindergarten, a spring-summer early childhood education program. She currently serves as chair of the board of The Marshall Project, and on the boards of The Foundation for a Just Society, Math for America, Smart Justice California and the Learning Policy Institute. Additionally, she volunteers at The Beat Within (a magazine by and for incarcerated youth). Liz earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s in education from Stanford University.

Liz Simons and Mark Heising founded the Foundation in 2007 and joined the Giving Pledge in 2016, publicly committing the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. You can read the letter they wrote about why they joined here.