Internationally renowned vanguards named to Rice’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders advisory board

Wendy Kopp, Carolyn Miles and David Rhodes to join board this month

Teach For All CEO Wendy Kopp, Save the Children CEO and President Carolyn Miles and CBS News President David Rhodes have been named to the advisory board for Rice University’s Doerr Institute for New Leaders. Their three-year terms began Jan. 1.

Wendy Kopp, Carolyn Miles and David Rhodes. 

These three leaders will join author Jim Collins, former Vice President Al Gore, Gen. Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.) and founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Professor Klaus Schwab, who were named to the board in September.

The Rice University Doerr Institute for New Leaders was established in the summer of 2015 with support from a gift from Ann and John Doerr with a mission to “elevate the leadership capacity of Rice students across the university.” It is a collaborative effort that exchanges techniques and ideas with other universities that engage in the development of students as new leaders. The advisory board members will serve as advisers to the institute on matters related to leader development at Rice, along with helping broaden the Doerr Institute’s reach, collaboration and impact worldwide.

“These new board members are brilliant leaders with amazing track records in entrepreneurship, education, global impact and the leadership of their own organizations,” said Tom Kolditz, executive director of the Doerr Institute. “We look forward to working with them and using their insights and advice to advance the experience of new leaders in universities.”

The Doerr Institute’s advisory board is being formed in collaboration with Ann and John Doerr, the staff and students of the Doerr Institute and John Strackhouse of the Caldwell Partners executive search firm. For more information on the institute, visit https://doerrinstitute.rice.edu/.

New board member bios:

Wendy Kopp

Kopp is the CEO and co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of 40 independent, locally led and governed partner organizations that recruit and develop promising future leaders to teach in their countries’ high-need classrooms and work with others, inside and outside of education, to ensure all children are able to fulfill their potential.

Wendy Kopp.

She founded Teach For America in 1989 to combat educational inequity in the United States. Today, more than 53,000 Teach For America corps members and alumni are leading within schools, school systems, and every sector and field that shapes them. Among them are 19,000 teachers, including nearly 7,000 first and second year corps members in 53 urban and rural regions across the country. After leading Teach For America’s growth and development for 24 years, Kopp transitioned out of the role of CEO in 2013. Today she remains an active member of Teach For America’s board.

Kopp led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of inspiring social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries. Now in its eighth year, the Teach For All network comprises partner organizations in 40 countries on six continents, including its founding partners, Teach For America and the U.K.’s Teach First.

Kopp is the author of “A Chance to Make History: What Works and What Doesn’t in Providing an Excellent Education for All” (2011) and “One Day, All Children: The Unlikely Triumph of Teach For America and What I Learned Along the Way” (2000).

She holds honorary doctorate degrees from University of Oklahoma (2014), Boston University (2013), Dartmouth College (2012), Harvard University (2012), Marquette University (2010), Washington University in St. Louis (2009), Georgetown University (2008), Mount Holyoke College (2007), Rhodes College (2007), Pace University (2004), Mercy College (2004), Smith College (2001), Princeton University (2000), Connecticut College (1995) and Drew University (1995).

She is the youngest person and the first woman to receive Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award (1993), the highest honor the school confers on its undergraduate alumni. In 1994 Time Magazine recognized her as one of the 40 most promising leaders under 40; in 2006, U.S. News & World Report named her as one of America’s Best Leaders; and in 2008, Time Magazine recognized her as one
of the World’s 100 Most Influential People. Kopp was the recipient of
the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2014); she has also been recognized with the Presidential Citizens Medal (2008), the Spelman College National Community Service Award (2011), the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2008), the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education Award (2006), the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award (2004), the Clinton Center Award for Leadership and National Service (2003), the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award (2003), Aetna’s Voice of Conscience Award (1994),
the Citizen Activist Award from the Gleitsman Foundation (1994) and the Jefferson Award for Public Service (1991).

Kopp serves on the board of New Profit and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, where she participated in the undergraduate program of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She resides in New York City with her husband, Richard Barth, and their four children.

Carolyn Miles

Miles is president and CEO of Save the Children, an organization that gives children in the United States and around the world a healthy start, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. The global Save the Children movement currently serves over 185 million children in the U.S. and in more than 120 countries.

Carolyn Miles.

Miles joined the organization in 1998 and was chief operating officer from 2004 to 2011; she became president and CEO in September 2011. Under her senior leadership, the organization has more than doubled the number of children it reaches with nutrition, health, education and other programs. Resources were just under $700 million in 2015. Miles’ signature issues include hunger, learning outcomes and ending preventable child deaths.

Prior to Save the Children, she worked in the private sector in Hong Kong for American Express and as an entrepreneur. While in Asia, she confronted the deprivation of the region’s children, which motivated her to dedicate her life to their welfare.

Miles has served on numerous boards, including Blackbaud, InterAction, USGLC, MFAN, Academy of Education, Arts and Sciences, and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, where she received her MBA. In 2015, Miles was named one of the 50 World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune magazine and inducted into the CT Women’s Hall of Fame. She is married to her husband, Brendan, and together they have three children. Follow Miles via her blog, Logging Miles, or on Twitter @carolynsave.

David Rhodes

Rhodes is president of CBS News, where he oversees the news division and all news content for the CBS Television Network, CBS digital platforms and CBS News Radio.

David Rhodes.

Rhodes is responsible for “CBS Evening News,” “CBS This Morning,” “CBS Sunday Morning,” “Face The Nation,” “48 Hours” and “60 Minutes,” as well as CBSNews.com and CBSN, the first-of-its-kind digital streaming news network available online and on all connected devices.

He was named president of CBS News in February 2011 and assumed the sole leadership of the news division in January 2015.

Rhodes was the catalyst behind the creation of “CBS This Morning,” a program that led a companywide re-emphasis on serious news reporting under the storied CBS News brand. Since the program’s launch, the broadcast has added a million daily viewers and is delivering the network’s largest morning news audience in nearly 30 years.

Over two presidential election cycles from 2012 to 2016, Rhodes expanded “Face The Nation” to a one-hour broadcast and worked with successive moderators to guide the show to become America’s No. 1 Sunday public-affairs program.

Early in his tenure, Rhodes oversaw a talent transition to the “CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley,” which has seen five consecutive years of viewer growth.

In November 2014, Rhodes, with CBS Interactive, launched CBSN, combining live anchoring with video on demand to bring CBS’ journalism to new audiences via live-streaming. CBSN is available 24 hours a day on mobile, on cbsnews.com and on “over-the-top” streaming services.

Rhodes joined CBS from Bloomberg LP, where he was head of U.S. Television. At Bloomberg, Rhodes was responsible for all programming, development, editorial and newsgathering and for relaunching the U.S. cable channel of the global financial news service in 2009 at the height of interest in the lessons learned from the financial crisis.

Rhodes began his career as a production assistant prelaunch at the Fox News Channel in August 1996 and later became the channel’s vice president of news. He was responsible for the network’s daily news reports and breaking news, including overseeing the Fox News’ assignment desk as news broke on Sept. 11, 2001.

Rhodes has been named to Fortune magazine’s “40 Under 40” twice, rising to No. 9, and to the Hollywood Reporter’s “35 Most Powerful People in Media,” GQ’s “50 Most Powerful People in Washington” and Crain’s New York Business’ “40 Under 40.”

He became a young global leader of the World Economic Forum in 2013 and is a member of the International Media Council at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland.

Rhodes is a member of the Rice University Board of Trustees and a member of the James A. Baker III Institute Advisory Board at Rice. He graduated from Rice in 1996. A native of New York City, Rhodes lives in Manhattan with his wife, Emma, and two sons.