Board of Directors
Mrs. Simone Lynch
Co-Chair
Born in the beautiful country of Trinidad and Tobago, Mrs. Lynch moved to Boston, Massachusetts (USA) with her family at the age of three. She is currently the Director of Federal Grant Programs at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. With over 26 years of experience in Education Policy, Educator Licensure, Educator Effectiveness and Development, Teacher Recruitment, and more recently Federal Entitlement Grants, Mrs. Lynch manages a portfolio of $1.5 billion dollars of Federal Entitlement grants distributed to Massachusetts school districts. She manages a team of nine dedicated staff members who ensure that the state gets this large amount of federal funding into its schools to support strong teaching and learning.
Mrs. Lynch attended Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts) and currently resides north of the Boston area with her husband. She has three children, one adult son and two teenage girls now in middle school. When not at work, Mrs. Lynch is active in her community and local school district. She sits on the local school system’s Site Council and serves as a parent representative, also volunteering her time with Girl Scouts of America. Additionally, she is an avid reader and is active in her church, serving where the Holy Spirit leads. Finally, in 2020, she edited and wrote a foreword for a co-authored family anthology titled, “Love Without Compromise.”
Mr. Nana Yaw Appah-Sampong
Co-Chair
Mr. Appah-Sampong is a graduate of Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut). As the son of Ghanaian parents, he has always desired to live a purpose-driven life, and more importantly, to improve the lives of others. Since joining Spire, a local gas distribution business, in 2019, Mr. Appah-Sampong has been actively engaged in the company's investor relations and treasury departments. In his previous role, Mr. Appah-Sampong was a junior investment banker at Wells Fargo Securities, where his primary emphasis was on capital market transactions in the energy and public power industries.
Mr. Appah-Sampong and his wife have three beautiful daughters.
Mr. Jeff Liberty
Co-Chair
Mr. Liberty is BetterLesson’s Senior Vice President of Innovation. An educational pioneer with over 20 years of experience as a teacher, a district administrator, literacy coach, and a founding principal of an ecology-themed secondary school in Boston, Massachusetts (USA), he joined the BetterLesson team in 2014 to design and to lead the Blended Master Teacher Project and is responsible for BetterLesson’s professional learning partnerships with schools and districts on three continents. Mr. Liberty also directs BetterLesson’s thought leadership in the areas of blended and personalized learning.
A father of two middle school students in the United States, Mr. Liberty is passionate about building loving, innovative, and equity-minded schools and systems that are worthy of the children and communities they serve.
Dr. Chukwuma Ekwelum
ex-officio
Dr. Ekwelum is proud to be serving as LEA's chief transformational leader, on the ground. For him, Legacy of Excellence Academy has been nothing short of a dream come true, starting as a mere idea that the Lord placed on his heart years ago. With over a decade of experience in the field of education, he brings to this position a profound respect for the process of successfully guiding our youth and the process of supporting continuous adult learning - two areas that require a great deal of humility and compassion. Specializing in culturally responsive teaching and learning, school start up, school turnaround, and teacher retention, Dr. Ekwelum is the author of Education's Silent Exodus: A Critical Exploration of Race & the Shortage of Black Men in the Teaching Profession.
Dr. Ekwelum is kept grounded by his faith and his family, specifically his incredible wife and their two, precocious children.