Host and Founder Ken Futernick, Ph.D.
Ken Futernick is a life-long educator, writer, and educational consultant to schools, school districts, and policy makers across the United States. His interests include labor-management partnerships, educator recruitment and retention, school and district transformation, implementation science, and community depolarization.
He began his career as an elementary teacher near Sacramento and, after earning his MA and PhD in education at the University of California, Berkeley, served as a faculty member at California State University, Sacramento, for twenty-two years. As a professor of education, he taught courses to new and veteran teachers and conducted research on teacher retention, educational policy, and pre-service teacher education programs. He also served as chair of the Department of Teacher Education. In 2016 he founded and directed EduCorps, a system-wide teacher recruitment initiative for the California State University.
In 2008, Futernick helped found and direct the School Turnaround Center at WestEd, a national nonprofit educational research and service organization based in San Francisco. He and his colleagues helped school leaders across the nation improve student outcomes by strengthening teaching and learning conditions.
Futernick currently hosts Teacher Stories, a podcast he launched in 2018 that celebrates the profound and lasting impact many teachers have on their students and communities. In 2021, he launched Courageous Conversations about our Schools, a podcast that invites education stakeholders to listen to one another and to engage in respectful conversations about the controversies at the center of today’s culture wars in education.
Futernick is currently leading an effort in El Dorado County in northern California to bridge political and social divides within and across all major sectors of the community. For more information, see www.bridgingdivides-eldorado.org.
In 2024, Futernick was elected to the El Dorado County Board of Education. His four-year term begins on December 13th, 2024.
Futernick lives in the Sierra foothills in California and can be reached at ken@schoolconversations.org.
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Meet the support team…
Natalie Millanes
Communication & Marketing Manager
Natalie Millanes serves as the Communication and Marketing Manager, where she applies her strategic vision and creative expertise to support the organization's branding and outreach efforts. Motivated by a strong passion for education and backed by experience in marketing, Natalie seamlessly integrates innovative communication strategies with meaningful marketing campaigns to further our mission and programs.
Nathan Dalton
Podcast Audio Engineer
Nathan Dalton is a multimedia journalist based in Berkeley. With longtime visionary storytellers The Kitchen Sisters, he produced the James Beard- and duPont-Columbia Award-winning series Hidden Kitchens for NPR’s Morning Edition, and the Webby Award-winning podcast The Kitchen Sisters Present. He is also the producer of the podcast What You're Eating from FoodPrint.org. He has created stories for TED, Pop-Up Magazine, and Radiotopia Live, and videos for social impact clients across the country. He also writes regularly for Berkeleyside.