Kira Orange Jones is the Chief Executive Officer of Teach Plus. She sets the organization’s vision and impact strategy and leads its work to develop and advance teachers as leaders in education policy and practice, build a more equitable and excellent education for students through change and innovation, and elevate the teacher leadership movement and the profession.
Prior to joining Teach Plus, Kira served as Senior Vice President at Teach for America. In 2019, she founded the TFA Systems Impact Lab, managing ten regions across the Midwest and South while advising TFA regions nationwide on strategy and systems change. She previously managed more than a dozen TFA regions across the country, serving over one million students with an annual budget of approximately $40 million. Kira spent a decade at the helm of Teach for America’s Greater New Orleans region, leading it through one of TFA’s most ambitious growth and impact efforts and expanding the organization’s presence from 100 to over 1,000 alumni.
The daughter of an educator, Kira began her career as an elementary school teacher and documentary filmmaker in Louisiana. In 2002, she founded Right Quick Productions, a non-profit dedicated to telling the stories and amplifying the voices of African American youth. In 2011, Kira was elected to her first term on Louisiana’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), and was subsequently re-elected in 2015 and 2019. As a state policymaker, she has helped increase teacher pay, strengthened the state’s public charter schools, expanded quality early childhood education for families, and grown the number of students prepared for post-secondary success. She most recently served as BESE’s Vice President as part of the Board’s first-ever all female leadership officer team and was re-elected by her fellow Board members in December 2021 to continue in that post.
In 2015, Kira was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People In The World. Her other honors include being named Louisianian of the Year by Louisiana Life Magazine and Woman of the Year by the New Orleans City Business Journal. She received the Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership presented annually to outstanding Teach For America alumni and, in 2020, was named a Distinguished Alumna of Wesleyan University. Kira is a Moderator for the Pahara Fellowship, a member of the Aspen Global Network, and a founding leadership committee member of Education Leaders of Color (EdLOC).
Kira holds a BA in Film Studies and Political Theory from Wesleyan University and a MEd from Harvard University. She lives in New Orleans.
