Everton Blair

Everton Blair, Jr. is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Leadership Fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, working with Commissioner Jeff Riley.

Born and raised in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Everton is first person of color, the youngest-ever and the first openly gay countywide chairman and board member elected to the Gwinnett County Board of Education, where he served 180,000 students and one million residents in the largest and most diverse school system in the state of Georgia.

Everton began his career as the founding AP Calculus teacher at KIPP Atlanta Collegiate High School and later served as a Fellow in President Obama’s White House Initiative on Educational Excellence and Program Director at the Broad Academy training national cohorts of superintendents. In 2018, Everton came home and ran for office, flipping a partisan school board seat by 31 points and making history with the most votes ever in a school board election in Georgia. After the EdLD, he intends to return home to pursue roles in education policy, leadership development and government to work toward systemic improvements for students.