Dr. Robert S. Harvey

Dr. Robert S. Harvey is an educator, minister, community connector, people strategist, and school system-leader pursuing a vision of justice, equity, and love. He is the President of FoodCorps, a national organization committed to ensuring that all our nation's children have access to nourishing food in schools, at the intersection of community-building, racial, and economic justice. He also holds a visiting professorship in the practice of public leadership.

Prior to FoodCorps, he served as Superintendent of East Harlem Scholars Academies, a community-based network of public charter schools and Chief Academic Officer of ETHP, in New York City. Before that, Dr. Harvey served as chief operating officer of Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black college in Louisville, and as an elementary school leader in Memphis. Committing his life to learning, he holds a doctorate in leadership, culture, and society from Memphis Theological Seminary, a master of theological studies from Harvard University, and a bachelor of arts from Bryant University.

His written work has appeared in Education Post, Citizen Education, TheGrio, EdWeek, Blavity, Chalkbeat, Education Dive, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and multiple academic journals and publications focused on race, pedagogy, and intersectional social/identity justice for the goal of equitable and inclusive communities. He is also the author of "Abolitionist Leadership in Schools: Undoing Systemic Injustice through Communally Consciousness Education" (Routledge, 2021), exploring school leadership and racial equity through the moral arc of an abolitionist lineage; and of "Teaching as Protest: Emancipating Classrooms through Racial Consciousness" (Routledge, 2022), which frames philosophical and practical pedagogy that centers freeing teaching and learning spaces for students and teachers.

He is Pahara Institute Fellow; and serves as chair of the The Current Project Board of Directors, is a member of the National Black Theatre Board of Directors and the Black Church Center for Equality and Justice Board of Directors, and is a member of Manhattan Community Board 11.