Ian Rowe (MBA 1993) is navigating a clear path to success for students at Public Prep, a network of tuition-free charter schools in New York City. Like the North Star-shaped model that frames the schools’ mission, Rowe is building a foundation for children in pre-K, elementary, and middle school with five points of light: character, academics, organizational stability, family/scholar engagement, and college knowledge.

“What’s constant is the aspiration to create a greater good,” he says. “We can prove the possible and create hope in communities where so many institutions have failed our students and families.”

Rowe, whose résumé includes leading roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, MTV, the White House, and Teach for America, joined the organization in 2010 at the urging of sectionmate and Public Prep cofounder Bryan Lawrence. Today, Public Prep’s single-sex schools in the Bronx and Manhattan have graduated 100 percent of their eighth-grade classes to a college-prep high school.

“What we are doing for 1,500 students in New York City can become a model for hundreds of thousands of students across the country,” he says.

(Published April 2016)

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