Melissa Wu leads Education Pioneers (EP) whose Fellowship programs attract, develop, and inspire diverse leaders to fuel the general management talent pipeline necessary to make public education in the US a lever for excellence and equity. Across a 25-year career she has seen first-hand that transformational leaders are required at every level of the education system to realize our bold ambitions for public education, and sees EP and its 4,700 Alumni nationwide working both individually and collectively towards those ambitions. 70% of EP alumni continue to work in education with 1 in 3 serving in senior leadership roles from Founder and CEO to COO, CFO, and Chief Talent Officer in districts, charter management organizations, education nonprofits, and ed tech companies. 

Previously, Melissa worked as a partner at TNTP, where she led a two-year research effort to produce “The Irreplaceables: The Real Retention Crisis in America’s Urban Schools,” and scaled Insight, a teacher survey and data service used in more than 1,400 schools to improve instructional leadership practices and school culture. Before EP and TNTP, she was a consultant at BCG and held multiple roles at The TEAK Fellowship, an academic enrichment program based in New York City where she was the first full-time employee. Melissa was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs in Los Angeles and started her career in the social sector through Princeton Project 55, which was her first introduction to a professional career in social impact. 

Melissa has an MBA from Harvard Business School and earned her bachelor’s in Sociology with High Honors from Princeton University, where she currently serves on the University Board of Trustees. She lives in Melrose, Massachusetts with her husband and two children.