Title: Chief Executive Officer, President

Company: Believe to Achieve International LLC

Location: New York

Dr. Marlaina Palmeri is the CEO and President of Believe to Achieve International LLC. She also serves as the Superintendent for a group of charter schools in Ohio. Dr. Palmeri utilizes an array of talents that enable her team to create and manage high performing schools, particularly for the nation’s most under-served students. This notable educator prides herself on fostering collaborative professional communities in schools that make student and school success their ultimate priority. Since 1999, Dr. Palmeri has focused on creating exemplary charter schools as well as the transformation and turnaround of failing schools under the educational reform agenda of the Obama administration. Dr. Palmeri’s passion, along with her colleague Mr. Brian Beck, is to develop high performing charter schools. Her goal is to expand the B2AI network of charters schools across the country, establishing distinguished schools of mastery through a framework of internationally proven standards of school excellence. Dr. Palmeri works with her schools to create systems and processes that inspire and motivate administrators, teachers, parents and students through innovative teaching & learning approaches. It is Dr. Palmeri’s mission is to give students access to the knowledge and skills they need not only for college and career success, but also for the future as socially conscious and globally competent citizens.

Dr. Palmeri attributes her success to the support received from her mother and father, Eleanor and Joe Palmeri; sisters Diane and Carol; life partner John Rayburn; niece and nephew Caitlin and Jon Paul Durso; dearest friends Dr. W. Bruce Gorman and Joseph Nardone. She has also been inspired by pioneering school leaders such as Chris Whittle, Mike Finnerty, Chris Cerf, Tonya Hinch, Joe Keeney and Lee Nunery, as well as her outstanding colleagues at Edison Schools. She is inspired on a daily basis by her extraordinary team at B2AI and her staff at the CVCS Schools. She became involved in her profession because she wanted to become a teacher ever since she was a little girl, when her grandfather built her a small classroom in the basement playroom. Dr. Palmeri also had extraordinary teachers in West Irondequoit and professors at SUNY Plattsburgh and the University of Rochester who believed in her ability to become an exemplary teacher and school leader.

Dr. Palmeri is currently working on school reform initiatives supported by President Obama’s education agenda. She is working with urban schools located in Colorado, Maryland, Connecticut, New York, D.C., and Ohio. She is also focusing her time on starting new charter schools across the country. Dr. Palmeri is now opening up two schools in Canton and Cleveland, Ohio called, Believe to Achieve Academy. In five years, Dr. Palmeri hopes to still be developing and supporting high performing urban schools around the country and abroad.