Leslie Cornfeld is an entrepreneur, educator, equity advocate, policy advisor as well as a public and private sector consultant. She currently leads a nonprofit that she founded to "drive opportunity at scale through innovation, collaboration and action". Cornfeld served as the Special Advisor for the President's My Brother's Keeper[1] initiative to United States Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan and John King Jr. during the Obama administration.[2] She was also a fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.[3]
During the Bloomberg administration, Cornfeld was a public policy consultant and a two-term advisor for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and served as Chair of the Mayor's Interagency Task Force on Truancy, Chronic Absenteeism & School Engagement.[4][5][6]
Cornfeld is also a former Federal Prosecutor, and served as Deputy Chief of the New York City Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption (also known as "the Mollen Commission"). Cornfeld has contributed articles and opinion pieces to The New York Times, Newsweek, Newsday, and New York Law Journal, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and has made television appearances on Dateline NBC, Turning Point, and PBS/WNET.[7] She speaks regularly at national conferences and summits.[8][9][10][11] In addition, she has been featured on podcasts such as Education Next[12] and interviewed recently about the National Education Equity Lab on CBS.[13]