Aneesh Sohoni, CEO of the Chicago-based nonprofit One Million Degrees, has been tapped to lead Teach For America, the national nonprofit that trains and places recent college graduates and others to teach in high-needs schools. He will replace Elisa Villanueva Beard, 27-year TFA veteran who announced plans to step down as head of the organization last year.
An alumnus for TFA, Sohoni grew up the child of Indian immigrants in Minneapolis. He taught English in a high school not far from where he grew up with a high concentration of Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian English learners.
He will step into the role April 15, as the 35-year-old organization works to reinvent itself amid changing public enthusiasm about teaching careers and a broader array of teacher residencies and local grow-your-own programs to recruit and train new teachers than when TFA started.
TFA experienced massive declines of staff and corps members during the pandemic. It reached a nadir in 2022, with just 1,600 new teachers joining its corps that year—down from a high of nearly 6,000 a decade before.
Participation has since rebounded to 2,300 active two-year corps members in 2024 in a network of about 70,000 active and alumni members and participants in the group’s Ignite tutor program. About 60 percent of active TFA corps members in 2024 are teachers of color, and more than 40 percent were first-generation college-goers.
About 3 in 5 TFA alumni continue to work in education after their two-year teaching contract, according to TFA spokesman Natalie Laukitis. Recent studies also suggest that about 1 in 4 TFA teachers remain in the classroom at least five years, and more rapidly than non-TFA teachers during those early years.
Earlier this year, TFA awarded Sohoni its annual alumni honor, the , for his work with One Million Degrees (formerly the Illinois Education Foundation), which provides wraparound services to help community college students in the Chicago metro area complete a college degree. He spoke with Education Week about how to inspire more young people to enter teaching and support new teachers.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You started your career at TFA. How did you decide to come back?
My own experience as a teacher and a corps member for Teach For America fundamentally shaped my world views and shaped how I wanted to spend my time and my career. I saw the boundless potential of our students, and I also saw how oftentimes they and their families were navigating challenges—unjust and inequitable systems, practices, or policies. Growing up, I’d imagined going to law school—that was the dream for me—but I made a decision after meeting my students and working with them that I was going dedicate the rest of my career to that, and it’s been the through-line of everything that I’ve done in my career. The opportunity to come back home to Teach For America where I got my start was very exciting.
How will your work with One Million Degrees inform your work with Teach For America?
My role at One Million Degrees was my first CEO role, so I’ve been really appreciative of everything I’ve been able to do in terms of impact, but also the learning I’ve been able to have: things like how to effectively lead an organization and move a team forward with a shared vision. Partnership and coalition-building in this work is so critical. That’s an ethos I’ll certainly carry forward with me as I come back home to Teach For America.
And then, something that is true at One Million Degrees, and I think it’s certainly true at Teach For America, is this rigorous focus on data and evidence. ... How can we continue to tweak and improve, and ... how can we ensure that those practices that work are adopted more broadly?
How do you plan to balance TFA’s work with both alumni who remain in the classroom and those who leave?
I think they’re both critically important. Our country needs excellent teachers, and I’m really proud of the part of Teach For America’s mission that brings corps members into the classroom. Many of our corps members themselves were taught by corps members previously, which is really exciting.
I also think it’s important to acknowledge that we need great leadership at every level of the education system, whether that’s in school leadership positions—which many TFA alums have gotten to do—whether it’s systems leadership or other organizations that support and impact students in schools, I think that’s a critical part as well. I’m really excited about the impact we can have with our network overall. You know, we have over 70,000 corps members, tutors through our Ignite Fellowship, alumni, staff, and beyond. There’s so much opportunity for us to continue to support that overall network of leaders and for them to deepen their impact on students.
Teach For America experienced severe participation declines during the pandemic. How do you plan to help the organization recover?
Over the last two years, the core has grown by over 50 percent [TFA staff confirmed the 2024 class has returned to pre-pandemic numbers]. I’m really excited to see the momentum of the growth of the corps size.
What made the opportunity at this moment appealing to me is there’s the momentum on the corps, which is critical. After 35 years of leadership for the organization, working in over 300 diverse communities, I really see an opportunity for Teach For America to be a leader on education, especially at a time where it feels like there’s been a lot of retreating.
TFA has moved into school-based tutoring in recent years. What role will tutoring play moving forward?
I think the Ignite Fellowship that Teach For America has been doing is really responsive to a community need. Especially in the context of the pandemic, I think there’s been a lot of attention on what effective, high-quality, high-dosage tutoring can really mean for students and families. It’s been an incredible pivot by the organization to say, what are other ways in which we can take things that we have in our core competency set—around finding, supporting, and developing incredible teachers—and help meet the moment?
I also think it’s another interesting avenue for young people, for college students, to get exposure and access to what the field of education can look like. The commitment that you’re making as a tutor is less of a commitment than you’re making as a corps member. Many tutors, Ignite fellows, also become corps members, so it’s a great initial pipeline and exposure opportunity for students to better understand what it would mean to be a corps member.
Research suggests fewer students are going into teaching as a profession. What needs to happen to bring more young people into teaching?
If you take a look at education or a look at the teaching profession, it has largely remained the same as it was decades ago. If you look at any other industry or sector, you’ve seen massive evolution, right? So I think there is certainly a need—and we hear this from teachers—to rethink what that teaching experience is and can look like. We need to figure out how to make the teaching profession something that is attractive to college graduates. There’s a need to make sure teachers are excited to continue on in their work and feel like they’re able to do so, in the things that they value and care about, which is impact on students and collaboration with their peers.
What are the most urgent supports you think new teachers need?
One of the things that I really appreciated when I was a corps member was entering the profession alongside many others who were going through the same experience. It’s this idea of being part of a community and something bigger than yourself. When I was facing my hardest days as a teacher, really trying to figure it out, I knew I had others in the corps with me who were going to hold me up and be there for me and vice versa.
As I think about today, one of the things that has certainly been top of mind for me is the well-being of our students and our teachers ... and how can we make sure that the educators have access to the resources they need as they take on really important work.
