Raúl Echevarría

With an educational career spanning more than 20 years, Raúl Echevarría is known for his commitment to educational excellence and building and leveraging collaborative partnerships to ensure student success. Raúl is co-founder, President and CEO of CommuniKids Preschool and Children’s Language Centers, where he provides leadership across the organization and oversees CommuniKids’ business development, educational programs and services–including research—and professional learning. CommuniKids (CK) is Washington, D.C.’s premier language immersion preschool, with four centers in the metro region. CK develops kindergarten readiness and social-emotional competency, while promoting multilingualism in very young children. He has served on the OSSE Dual Language Learner Working Group and the DC Board of Audiologists and Speech and Language Pathology, and he presents at national conferences on multi-lingual early childhood education, including ACTFL and NAEYC. Raúl is invited to speak on education policy issues; most recently, he testified before the DC Council on the need to increase funding for the Birth-to-Three for All DC Act of 2018 and the Fairfax County School Board in 2016 to ensure adequate funding for language immersion programs. Raúl has received the 2019 Multilingual Education Award from the DC Language Immersion Project and the 2016 Federico de Onís Award from the Plaza Institute. Prior to his tenure in education, he worked for the Office of the Special Council in Washington, D.C. and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination in Boston, MA, where he focused on civil rights law and whistle blower protection. Raúl participated in the George Washington University’s “Teacher 2000” program, a rigorous teacher certification program designed for professionals who wish to pursue a career in language education, and completed extensive Spanish language and cultural studies at the Instituto Internacional in Madrid, Spain. Raul holds a B.A. in Political Science from Boston University and a J.D. from the University of Puerto Rico.