Liz Simons is chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation. A former teacher, she worked in Spanish-bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms, and subsequently founded Stretch to Kindergarten, a spring-summer early childhood education program. Simons currently serves as chair of the board of The Marshall Project, and on the boards of The Foundation for a Just Society, Math for America, and Smart Justice California. Additionally, she volunteers at The Beat Within (a magazine by and for incarcerated youth). Simons earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s in education from Stanford University.