Heather Wathington is the President of Girard College, a boarding school for children from families with limited resources in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of the See Forever Foundation and the Maya Angelou Schools. The Maya Angelou Schools are a multi-campus collaboration of schools for opportunity youth dedicated to empowering young people to reach their potential and to transition to college, career, and a lifetime of success; the See Forever Foundation supports the schools to accomplish this mission. Prior to her appointment at the See Forever Foundation, Dr. Wathington was both an assistant and research professor of education at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. Dr. Wathington’s research spans the areas of college access, matriculation and persistence into higher education as well as postgraduate study and research training. Her research has been supported by more than $2 million in grants from the Institute for Education Sciences, the Houston Endowment, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Wathington has also held positions at Lumina Foundation and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She also serves on the boards of the National Youth Employment Coalition and the Manifest Your Destiny Foundation. Dr. Wathington is an honors graduate of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and earned a master’s degree in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania. She has her doctorate from the University of Michigan in Higher and Postsecondary Education.