How The Broad Center at Yale SOM Changes Lives for Students Nationwide

When Fabiola Bagula (TBF 2024–25) began an interim superintendent role in San Diego’s public school district—California’s second largest—she found the system in “an emergency state.” Bagula had inherited a public relations crisis and an $187 million budget deficit, not to mention responsibility for more than 15,000 employees. The scope of the problems facing her made Bagula wonder if she was up to the job.

“I needed help, and then Yale and The Broad Center showed up,” says Bagula, who moved into the interim position around the same time she started the Fellowship for Public Education Leadership (TBF) at Yale SOM. “Everything was acutely aligned to what I needed.”

In The Broad Fellowship, one of the first topics Bagula and her cohort tackled was public relations. Thanks to personalized coaching sessions, Bagula returned to her district with the clarity she needed to reshape its communications department. She began holding press conferences about the district’s achievements and launched targeted newsletters to keep a variety of communities informed. Timely support on these and other topics helped Bagula guide her district through a tumultuous period—and facilitated her own career successes. Now San Diego’s permanent superintendent, she expects her district to reach a 92% graduation rate this year, a historic high for the district and one of the top graduation rates in the state.

The Broad Center at Yale SOM recruits, trains, and supports leaders to transform urban public school systems. Since becoming part of SOM in 2019 through a landmark gift from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the center has offered two tuition-free programs: the Fellowship for Public Education Leadership, an advanced leadership training program for senior leaders like Bagula, and the Master’s in Public Education Management, for emerging and mid-career leaders. Bagula is one of more than 1,000 education leaders from across The Broad Center’s history who have used lessons learned to strengthen K-12 public school systems nationwide.

“A quality public education for all children is the civil rights issue of our time,” says Natasha Trivers, assistant dean and the Anita and Joshua Bekenstein ’80 B.A. Executive Director of The Broad Center. “Our theory of change at The Broad Center at Yale SOM is that sourcing and developing the best leaders to sit at the helm of public education school systems is the single most important lever in dramatically improving outcomes for young people. It’s how we strengthen and/or transform school systems to better serve children. It all starts at the top.”

One hallmark of the master’s degree program is a capstone project, in which students apply SOM coursework to real challenges in their school systems. For his project, Raymie Fernandez ’24, chief operating officer at a charter school network serving East Harlem and the Bronx in New York City, addressed food access and quality in his school system, which he considered a major equity issue facing students and families. Through his project, he proposed transitioning from an outsourced cafeteria model to a scratch-cooked, in-house program. That program now serves over 2,600 students and has increased student participation in school meal offerings.

“The Broad Center was critical in helping me launch and scale this program,” Fernandez says. “It gave me the tools to move from an idea to an implementable, investable, and sustainable operating model.”

In Salem, Oregon, Chris Moore ’25, director of behavioral health in the city’s public school system, redesigned his department’s programming, staffing structure, and training approach through his capstone project. His work helped secure a $4 million district commitment for a new behavioral health facility serving students with exceptional needs.

Moore credits SOM courses such as Operations Management, Education Policy for Systems Leaders, and Everyday Leadership with equipping him to execute an ambitious vision. Since opening the facility, Moore’s district has seen an increase in the number of students receiving the right behavioral health support at the right time, a reduction in staff injuries, and a decrease in the use of more restrictive behavioral support strategies.

The Broad Center also works to bolster the public education leadership pipeline, helping its students advance into roles with greater responsibility.

When DJ Cherif (TBF 2025–26) entered The Broad Fellowship, she was serving as chief academic officer at Detroit’s largest charter school network. She began applying what she was learning in her work, she says, and her colleagues noticed. When the network needed a new superintendent and CEO, its board bypassed a national search and appointed Cherif to the role. “They trusted that I had the skills and community support to do it,” she says.

A case study that she encountered at SOM about talent development in police departments in Mexico reshaped how Cherif approached talent in her own organization. “It had nothing to do with schools, but it had everything to do with schools,” she recalls. Like police departments, school systems must create the right conditions for their team to grow, Cherif says; to have great teachers—the most important factor in student success—schools must invest in their development.

In the courses Managing Groups and Teams and Interpersonal and Group Dynamics, Cherif learned how to implement decision-making frameworks, strengthen her self-awareness and her understanding of others, and serve as a “leader of leaders.” Now, she says, the fellowship is positioning her for success in her new role.

Jorge Robles (TBF 2023–24, TBR 2013–15) participated in The Broad Residency (TBR) through The Broad Center’s predecessor organization in Los Angeles while beginning his career in public education. When he returned to the center almost a decade later through The Broad Fellowship (TBF), he wanted to learn evidence-based management practices that faculty members explore at Yale SOM.

“The Broad Center gives you exposure to amazing faculty who are doing research that helps you think differently about the work,” says Robles, who is now chief financial officer of Nashville’s public school district. “How can we leverage management insights to transform public education systems to improve student outcomes?”

Research is central to The Broad Center’s mission. The center supports faculty research on K-12 education systems—on issues spanning racial and ethnic bias among teachers to the effectiveness of school capital investments—while helping students put findings into practice in their own districts. This year, The Broad Center launched a publicly accessible repository aggregating nationwide data on superintendents and other district administrators, enabling researchers to examine how leaders shape student outcomes. The repository will help advance research on public education leadership at Yale SOM and across the field.

Alumni say that The Broad Center changed their own trajectories and, in turn, made a difference in the communities they serve: the students who eat healthier lunches, the staff who provide behavioral health support more safely and effectively, and the families who feel more connected to their school districts.

“Tens of thousands of kids are impacted because The Broad Center has invested in leaders,” Moore says. “Public education is the single greatest lever for equitable human flourishing that we have in our communities. We can’t just rely on people—we need to have strong systems.”