Great Hearts' Steady Growth Drives Appointment of Christine Jones as Interim CEO

PHOENIX, Nov. 6, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Great Hearts announced today that Board Member Christine Jones will serve as interim CEO over its Arizona and Texas operations. Great Hearts is the largest provider of classical education in the country, serving more than 13,000 students at 29 public schools in greater Phoenix, Arizona and San Antonio and Irving, Texas, with waitlists that exceed enrollment.

Ms. Jones, an accountant, attorney and former Executive Vice President and General Counsel of GoDaddy.com, will serve as interim CEO as a search begins for a long-term national leader; she joined the Great Hearts board in 2013, and has been a driving influence in the network's growing success and demand across Arizona and nationally.

"We continue our work to educate more great-hearted leaders prepared for the 21^st century, and we are still in our early phases," said Jay Heiler, Great Hearts Chairman and co-founder. "To fulfill our mission, we seek and must achieve operational as well as academic excellence. Christine Jones has the gifts, the background, the dedication and the knowledge of our organization to advance this process as our interim chief executive."

As interim CEO, Jones will lead a number of ongoing, evolutionary processes around the Great Hearts operating model, and assist the organization in establishing solid governance structures for the path ahead. Among her other direct reports in the organization, Christine will work closely with Great Hearts co-founder and Texas President Dr. Daniel Scoggin, and Arizona President Erik Twist.

"I am excited by this next phase of our improvement and expansion to bring the virtue of classical education to more and more families. Christine Jones will help us get to that next level to fulfill our vision," said co-founder Dr. Daniel Scoggin.

"As a Great Hearts board member, I have come to appreciate this great American education organization, and the value of its distinctive model for children, families and the community," said Jones. "I admire the vision that its founders have maintained since the inception of the organization, and I am privileged to help them write the next chapter."

A search for a permanent Great Hearts chief executive will begin in the immediate term.

About Great Hearts Academies:

A Great Hearts classical education transforms students into great-hearted leaders prepared for the 21^st century by teaching the skills necessary for success: the ability to innovate through creativity, communicate clearly, apply knowledge to critical thought and analysis of the world around us, and to do so with virtue, goodwill, ethical judgment and integrity.

• The Great Hearts SAT average over the past four years is 1829, a steady 300+ point advantage over the national average.
• 98% of Great Hearts graduates immediately attend universities and colleges, with 2% participating in military service or a gap year.
• 54% of Great Hearts graduates pursue a STEM-focused course of study in college.
• The 270 graduates in the Great Hearts Class of 2015 (across six academies) were offered nearly $30M in scholarships and were invited to attend the most prestigious universities in the country.
• Great Hearts students outperformed students across the globe on the internationally normed OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, achieving higher scores in Reading and Science than Shanghai-China, Korea, Japan, and other world leaders in education. In Math, Great Hearts students were second only to Shanghai.

Learn more at www.greatheartsaz.org and www.greatheartstx.org.

Arizona Contact:
Jessica Taylor
Director of Communications
[email protected] 
(602) 889-5034

Texas Contact:
Julie Linn
Senior Vice President of Advancement & Policy
[email protected]
(202) 253-7395

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151105/284484

SOURCE Great Hearts Academies

Related Links

http://www.greatheartsaz.org