Stephanie Banchero

Stephanie Banchero is the Director of the Education & Economic Mobility Program, which aims to close income and race disparities in college and career success through high-quality education. The Program focuses on ensuring young people of color and those from marginalized backgrounds have great educators, leave high school ready for college and career success, and earn a post-secondary credential that leads to a good job. Stephanie directly leads our investments to ensure students in the Great Lakes region have high-quality, diverse teachers and principals. She has a particular focus on state and federal policies to diversify the workforce, use data to align teacher supply and demand, smooth pathways into the profession, and reimagine the role of the teacher. Stephanie co-chairs the Chicago Forefront Human Capital funders group and the Illinois State Policy funders group.

Before coming to Joyce, Stephanie was national education reporter for the Wall Street Journal and, before that, spent 13 years covering K-12 education for the Chicago Tribune. Her nationally recognized reporting has received first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association and the Missouri School of Journalism. She also received the Harry Chapin Media Award and an honorable mention from the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families. She was awarded a prestigious one-year Knight Fellowship in journalism at Stanford University.

Stephanie holds a bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is a past president of the National Education Writers Association and is a member of the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship Board. Stephanie is a Top Chef aspirant, an enthusiastic electric guitar player, and die-hard Utah Jazz fan.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” –Nelson Mandela