Our Origin Story

Greenhouse E3 was born out of the experience of charter school executives with over 10 decades collectively of experience leading public schools. These executives believe that we can do more to better prepare and support public education executives to lead school systems across the country.

Our experience has taught us that the organizational stability of school systems is directly impacted by the critical moment when the top education executive transitions out of this leadership role. When executive transitions go well, organizations maintain the opportunity to execute well, support the growth of their students and team, and grow to do more for their communities. When transitions don’t go well, it creates instability and often a regression in student support and success.

For many critical issues across the charter sector, New Orleans with its all charter district has served as a bellwether, and New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) has played the role of a national innovation hub designing, piloting, and spinning out solutions that can benefit the entire sector. In 2019, NSNO incubated and launched the Executive Education Experience(E3) under the leadership of Patrick Dobard, Alex Jarrell, Herneshia Dukes, and Jay Altman to train and prepare future executives to lead the city’s school systems. Focused primarily on the CEO role, NSNO developed a curriculum customized to support development of the skills and mindsets needed to successfully lead charter school management organizations. This curriculum is continuously revised based on feedback from participants, experiences of alumni now in CEO roles, charter management organization leaders in New Orleans and around the country, and feedback from advisors ranging from experts in executive leadership development to community needs to state and national leaders in education.

While the E3 program was being incubated in New Orleans, other charter executives around the country were wrestling with the same succession challenges, and current and former executives were being asked to coach new CEOs. Several of these charter school CEOs and former CEOs came together with the team at New Schools for New Orleans to form Greenhouse E3, a standalone national nonprofit organization to replicate and expand the E3 work of NSNO and the coaching work that was being done individually across the country. In the Fall of 2022, Greenhouse E3 formally took over this important work to prepare and support aspiring educational leaders and early stage education executives to successfully lead public school systems across the country.