Featured Profile

Alex Johnston is Chief Executive Officer of ConnCAN. As ConnCAN’s first employee, Alex launched what is now regarded as one of the nation’s leading state-level education reform organizations. In the five years since, he has led ConnCAN’s effort to advocate for state policies that will ensure every Connecticut child has access to a great public school. In 2009, ConnCAN achieved three major legislative victories through its ‘Mind the Gaps’ campaign: overhauling the state’s teacher certification rules, opening up stores of longitudinal student achievement data to the public and securing $8 million of funding for the expansion of high-performing public charter schools in the midst of an $8 billion state budget deficit.

Before helping to found ConnCAN, Alex Johnston directed operations at the New Haven Housing Authority, working as a member of the management team tasked with turning the agency around from the brink of receivership. A graduate of Harvard University, Alex received a D. Phil. in politics from Oxford’s Lincoln College on a Rhodes Scholarship, where he studied the impact of government funding on nonprofit service providers. Alex serves on the state commission charged with developing Connecticut’s P-20 data system, is a member of the National Charter School Resource Center Advisory Board and sits on the New Haven Board of Education.