Project Leadership

Jon Fullerton is the executive director of CEPR. Jon has extensive experience working with policymakers and executives in designing and implementing organizational change and improvements. Before coming to Harvard, Jon served as the Board of Education’s director of budget and financial policy for the Los Angeles Unified School District. In this capacity, he provided independent evaluations of district reforms and helped to ensure that the district’s budget was aligned with board priorities. From 2002 to 2005 he was vice-president of strategy, evaluation, research, and policy at the Urban Education Partnership in Los Angeles, where he worked with policymakers to ensure that they focused on high impact educational strategies. Jon previously worked for five years at McKinsey & Company as a strategy consultant. He has a PhD in government and an A.B. in social studies, both from Harvard.

Tim Brennan is CEPR's chief operating officer. As such, he oversees financial and operating activities, while serving as a strategic partner to CEPR’s leadership team. Prior to joining CEPR, Tim served as chief operating and financial officer of social investment research pioneer KLD Research & Analytics, Inc, directing the growth and ultimate sale of the company to RiskMetrics Group in 2009. Previously, Tim co-founded and led Brennan & Fournier, Inc., providing contract financial and operations leadership to New England mission-based organizations. During his five-year tenure as president, the firm assumed an ongoing leadership role in over twenty individual organizations. From 1992 through 1998, Tim served as CFO at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), directing the company’s growth from $12 million to $62 million in revenue, with operational activities in eleven countries. Tim earlier held senior management positions with C.R. Bard, Inc., a Fortune 500 developer and marketer of medical products and services. Tim earned his B.A. at the University of Notre Dame and his MBA in accounting at Boston College.

Corinne Herlihy is the project director for the National Center for Teacher Effectiveness (NCTE) at CEPR. She oversees the day-to-day operations of NCTE and the corresponding research agenda. This work includes coordinating data collection and analysis, development of and execution of the national leadership activities, and overseeing the timeline of the project. Corinne serves as a primary liaison with the research team and the districts involved in the core study of developing measures of effective math teaching, and coordinates outside vendors employed in the service of the research. Prior to joining NCTE, Corinne was a senior research associate and deputy director of the K12 policy area at MDRC, a nonprofit research organization. At MDRC, Corinne directed a study of small schools of choice in New York City that capitalized on naturally occurring experiments in student assignment data; directed the Boost-Up Math project which resulted in a feasibility report with design options for evaluating supplemental ninth-grade math programs; managed MDRC’s analysis work on the National Reading First Impact Study; was a lead author on evaluations of the Talent Development High School and Talent Development Middle School models; and co-authored Foundations for Success: Case Studies of How Urban School Systems Improve Student Achievement. Prior to earning a master’s degree in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Corinne was a teacher of mathematics at the middle and high school levels.