Bio

Susan Frost Vice President

Susan comes to the Sheridan group with over 30 years of experience in national education policy and advocacy. Throughout her career she created some of the most innovative and successful strategies and organizations which have made education the national priority it is today.

Susan’s commitment to the education of children began on the front lines as a 6th grade public school teacher in Kansas. In 1980 she moved to Washington where she worked for Senator Edward Kennedy on the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee. She was then chosen by an emerging coalition of national education organizations, The Committee for Education Funding (CEF), to lead their effort in making the case for the federal role in education. Over the next ten years, CEF became a powerful voice for the education of children.

Under the Clinton Administration Susan became a senior advisor to then U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. As an integral part of his leadership team, she helped ensure that President Clinton’s education budgets and major initiatives were enacted into law. Her portfolio included new proposals to create the Reading Excellence Act, the E-rate for schools and libraries, bonding authority for school construction, GEAR-UP to prepare middle and high school students for college, Hope Scholarships to help students pay for college, a number of initiatives to promote teacher excellence, and a grassroots advocacy campaign, American Goes Back to School.

In 2001, with funding from major foundations, Susan started the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy organization that made the case for ensuring that every child graduates high school and is prepared for college and work. The Alliance identified the nation’s thirty percent high school dropout rate as a major challenge and built education coalitions garnering widespread support for new federal high school policy. The Alliance led the effort to create the Striving Readers Act to reinforce reading across the curriculum and bring to scale reading interventions for older students.

Most recently, Susan comes to The Sheridan Group from Education Priorities, a progressive education policy consulting firm. As President and founder of the firm Susan worked with national organizations to set policy agendas to improve adolescent literacy, middle school education and to expand partnerships for global learning.

Community Engagement

Susan remains committed to real-time experience with schools, teachers and students. Susan serves on the nonprofit board of a large, high-performing 6-12 school in Washington DC where she can be part of education policy and implementation on the ground.