About John
As founder and chief executive officer of DMGroup, John is responsible for ensuring that DMGroup brings the best management and leadership practices to its national network of public school district leaders and administrators. He works closely with superintendents to develop and implement system-wide efforts that lead to higher student achievement while improving operations and lowering costs. He draws on his extensive background in education, business, management, and academia to help school districts apply management and education best practices to deliver lasting results.
In addition, John has been a Senior Lecturer on the faculty of the Harvard Business School since 2011. He is the Co-Chair of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), a joint initiative between the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Business School that works to strengthen leadership competencies of the largest urban school districts in the U.S. John created and teaches the second-year MBA elective course Entrepreneurship and Technology Innovations in Education, which explores ways in which entrepreneurs are pursuing the use of technology to transform education and achieve higher performance. He also co-teaches the Social Innovation Lab, a project-based course providing student teams an opportunity to build a social enterprise with the discipline of business tools and entrepreneurial techniques.
Since founding DMGroup in 2004, John has overseen the successful completion of hundreds of projects tackling complex challenges and implementing enduring solutions that deliver lasting impact. John has worked on the development and implementation of powerful, focused strategic plans that drive results, on the design and implementation of innovative new teacher evaluation systems, on developing student-based budgeting systems, on evaluating the efficacy of technology-based innovations and programs, and more.
Prior to starting DMGroup, John was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, Inc., a global strategic management consulting firm, where he helped clients develop and implement new strategies and improve operating efficiencies. John was also founding CEO of a school management company that grew to serve more than 20,000 students. In addition, John served as founding president of Kaplan Learning Services, the institutional division of Kaplan, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Washington Post Company.
John holds an A.B. with honors from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is active in his community and serves on numerous boards, including BELLExcel, a non-profit organization that increases the educational and life achievement of elementary school children living in low-income communities.