Our Team
Michael T.S. Wotorson
Michael Wotorson serves as Executive Director of the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), an unprecedented partnership of leading national civil rights and education advocacy organizations in the United States. As the executive director of CHSE, Michael is responsible for overseeing the coalition’s federal policy and advocacy agenda, its public outreach and education activities, as well as its strategic communications and state organizing efforts.
Michael has spent his career as a dedicated advocate for educational equity and civil rights and has worked for more than 16 years as an organizer, researcher, advocate, and policy analyst. Prior to joining CHSE, Michael served as National Education Director for the NAACP, where he oversaw the associations’ national policy strategy as embodied in its Call for Action in Education Initiative and developed advocacy strategies and campaigns to address racial/ethnic disparities in education in support of the organization’s overall education advocacy agenda. Michael was also the principal author of the association’s publication on education resource allocation called “Equity Matters.”
Prior to his work with the NAACP, Michael served as School Improvement Director for the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center and was responsible for providing technical assistance to schools and districts in Maryland, North Carolina, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Mr. Wotorson also served as the Urban/Metropolitan Affairs Manager in the Division of Government Relations and Policy Analysis with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). This position was actually a jointly held position with the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. Michael also spent part of his early career with the Fair Employment Council of Greater Washington where he served as Co-Director and managed employment testing projects, and the Anti-Defamation League where he directed a federally-funded hate crime prevention and public education project of the called Partners Against Hate. Michael began his professional career as a campus ombudsman at the Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, Missouri.
Over the years, Michael has also maintained an organizational consulting practice and provided technical assistance to a wide array of clients including Howard University, DC Public Schools Office of Bilingual Education, Wider Opportunities for Women, House of Ruth, DC Central Kitchen, Prince George’s County Human Services Coalition, and the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization.
Originally from Liberia, West Africa, Michael holds Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Political Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia and he is ABD in Education Administration from American University in Washington, DC. Michael serves on the boards of the Maryland ACLU, Friends of Liberia network, and Nu Vision Pac. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc.
Iris Bond Gill
Iris Bond Gill serves as deputy executive director and director of policy and outreach for the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), where she guides the development and strategic implementation of CHSE’s policy and advocacy agenda while fostering the coalition’s relationships with members of Congress, the White House, and other Federal and state education policymakers. She is passionate about education as a vehicle for improving the opportunities and outcomes for all young people, and has spent the last 10 years advocating for policies to improve the nation’s secondary schools.
Prior to joining CHSE, Gill was a senior director at the American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) where she directed a project to provide hands-on professional development to state policy leaders on issues related to high school reform. Prior to joining AYPF, she worked at the Alliance for Excellent Education and directed an adolescent literacy policy initiative that helped to increase the level of national attention on the literacy needs of older students.
Gill taught in urban New Orleans under the auspices of Teach For America, a nationally acclaimed teaching corps. In 1999, she was a founding teacher at New Orleans’ first charter school, New Orleans Charter Middle School, which was the highest performing non-selective middle school in Orleans Parish from 1999 to 2005, prior to Hurricane Katrina.
Among her many writing credits, Gill authored the introduction to Profiles in Leadership: Innovative Approaches to Transforming the American High School, a collection of essays written by some of America’s foremost education innovators, including Melinda French Gates, Former Governor of Virginia Mark Warner, and Former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley.
Gill has a bachelor of science degree from Arizona State University and a master of science degree from the H. John Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. She has completed doctoral coursework in education policy and leadership at the University of Maryland – College Park. She serves on the Board of Directors of Associates for Renewal in Education, a community-based agency dedicated to serving the needs of children, youth, and families in Washington, D.C.
Gill lives in the District of Columbia with her husband and two daughters.
Elizabeth Cohen
Elizabeth Cohen serves as CHSE’s policy analyst, helping to establish and advance the organization’s policy direction.
Elizabeth comes to CHSE from the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she served as a research assistant focusing on the policy implications of bilingual education, desegregation, high school graduation rates, and minorities in higher education. At the Washington Regional Office of MALDEF, Elizabeth completed an internship, assisting staff in collaboration with the National Women’s Law Center to develop “Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation” and creating materials for MALDEF’s Parent School Partnership and Truth in Immigration Web site.
Her commitment to education reform began when she served as an AmeriCorps literacy tutor in the Oakland Unified School District. During this time, Elizabeth also volunteered at the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA), where she facilitated hands-on activities at community centers, festivals and other public venues. When her term of service ended with AmeriCorps, a staff position was created for her as MOCHA’s studio manager.
Elizabeth’s experience also includes substitute teaching in public schools and teaching preschool in southern California. Elizabeth is proficient in oral and written Spanish and is a 2008 Magnum Cum Laude graduate of UC Santa Barbara.
Tiffany Knight
Tiffany Knight serves as the State Relations Manager at the Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE), ensuring the ongoing alignment between CHSE federal policy work and the state policy and organizing work. She serves as a liaison to the CHSE Grassroots Committee, bringing an extensive background in education policy, advocacy, and the implementation of evidence-based strategies for racial equity to the organization.
Prior to joining CHSE, Knight was an Advocacy Specialist at the National Parent Teacher Association (PTA) where she built organizational policy to engage the PTA’s five million members to promote the federal public policy agenda related to family engagement in education and equity and opportunity in education. Before joining the National PTA, she worked as the Director of Organizing for Advocates for Child and Youth (ACY), advocating for children through community-based political organizing.
Knight has been a research fellow at the Risk, Resilience, and Urban Leadership Research Affiliate at the George Washington University and has recently presented on “African American Male Academic Achievement: School and Pedagogical Considerations” at the Educational Symposium of Research and Innovations (ESRI) and the National Council of Educating Black Children (NCEBC).
As the Director of Organizing at ACY, Knight spearheaded the "grassroots and grasstops" mobilization to introduce legislation that requires the development of a cultural competency training curriculum for specified law enforcement officers assigned to public schools, in consultation with the Maryland Department of Education and the Maryland Police Training Commission. Specifically, she developed strategy to gain delegate sponsorship of the legislation and reached out to several grassroots stakeholders to support and to testify in support of the legislation.
Knight has bachelor of arts degrees from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in psychology and Spanish and a master of arts degree from American University in psychology. She is currently completing her doctorate (ABD) in educational policy and administration at the George Washington University, where she is exploring institutional policies and school leader implementation strategies that build resilience in low-performing African-American male students in secondary education.