Richard Gray serves as Metro Centers’ Deputy Executive Director of School Change and Community Engagement Programs and Director of the Community Organizing & Engagement team. His work includes providing support and strategic assistance to community and youth organizing public education campaigns and programs helping to build alliances between CBOs, unions and research/policy institutes.
Before joining the Metro Center, Richard directed the Community Organizing and Engagement at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and Annenberg’s Center for Education Organizing at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR).
Prior to Annenberg, Richard was the Director of National Technical Assistance at New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP), where he assisted community groups in New York City and across the country in developing strategies to improve local schools and shape more effective and equitable education policies.
He was also the Co-Executive Director of the National Coalition of Advocates for Students (NCAS), a nationwide network of child advocacy organizations that work to improve the access of quality public education to student populations who have traditionally been underserved by public schools.
Richard is also a Lecturer of Law at Columbia Law School, helping students apply their legal training to advance authentic collaboration between educational institutions and communities.
Richard received a BA in History from Brown University and a JD from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.