District Leaders

Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, educator, and human rights defender who has taught at Harvard University since 1998. At HGSE, he is core faculty in the Equity and Opportunity Foundations Curriculum, Online Master’s Program in Education Leadership, and Higher Education Concentration, and faculty chair of The B.R.A.V.E. Institute. At the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the first openly gay faculty member and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ+ matters, he is faculty chair of the Global LGBTQI+ Human Rights Program at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and faculty affiliate at the Center for Public Leadership. He is also a core faculty member in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. An historian of social movements, he teaches courses on equity and education, communication and leadership, and the history and politics of creating change.

Deborah Jewell-Sherman is the first woman professor of practice at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). She served as superintendent of the Richmond (VA) Public Schools from 2002 to 2008 and built a reputation as one of the most successful urban district superintendents in the country. Since returning to her alma mater in 2008, Jewell-Sherman has served as the director of the Urban Superintendents Program and currently, she serves as core faculty for the Doctorate of Education Leadership Program (Ed.L.D.). In addition to her work nationally with educational leaders and her yearly chairing of Institutes through Programs in Professional Education, Jewell-Sherman has done extensive work in South Africa as the principal investigator for an initiative between HGSE faculty and the University of Johannesburg. She also has collaborated with the Qatar Education Foundation on leadership, communication, and strategic planning. In 2009, Jewell-Sherman was named Virginia Superintendent of the Year and in 2013 she received the Dr. Effie Jones Humanitarian Award, both from AASA, the School Superintendents Association. In 2015, she received the Morningstar Family Award from HGSE in recognition of teaching excellence. Additionally, she was named the 2022 New York University Dorothy Height Alumna of the Year and was the doctoral convocation speaker at the Steinhardt School of Education graduation.

Jennifer Cheatham is a senior lecturer on education and co-chair of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP). Since earning her Ed.D. from HGSE in the Urban Superintendent’s Program, Jennifer's continued focus has been on leading for equity and transformational change in school districts. Her expertise lies in creating instructional coherence, cultivating strong teams, designing systems for professional learning, and strengthening routines for organizational learning. She is currently the co-chair of the Collaborative on Political Leadership in the Superintendency. For over six years, she served as the superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District. During her tenure, she and her team established strong routines for continuous improvement at every level of the school system, strengthened the district’s core instructional program K-12, improved the district’s approach to family partnership which included design of their local approach to community schools, expanded options for post-secondary success with a focus on student-centered design, strengthened hiring and induction systems with a focus on diversity, and established powerful one-of-a-kind partnerships with a focus on research and innovation. Cheatham previously served as the chief of instruction for Chicago Public Schools, a chief area officer for Chicago Public Schools, the executive director of curriculum and instruction for San Diego City Schools, and a coach and professional developer for the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC) in San Francisco. Before joining BASRC, she led a multi-year initiative aimed at improving academic literacy for middle school students in Newark, CA where she began her career as an 8th grade English teacher.