Mary Filardo, Executive Director

Mary is the Executive Director of the 21^st Century School Fund and founded the [Re]Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition. She is a leading national authority and advocate for improving the equity, efficiency and quality of public school buildings and grounds. Mary has researched and written extensively on public school facility policy and spending, as well as worked with local and state communities and officials on effective long-range facilities master planning, facilities data management, and improved oversight and accountability for capital programs. She has a BA in philosophy and mathematics from St. John's College, a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, and is a 1979 Truman Scholar from the District of Columbia.

Sean O'Donnell, Deputy Director

Sean has over twenty years of research and communications experience in the K-12 school facilities field. He has built a large network of professional contacts in school facilities over his career within the nonprofit, university, LEAs, SEAs, federal government, industry, and association organizations. Sean has extensive school facilities research and data experience at the local, state and federal levels enabling him to quickly understand key issues and conduct analysis. With an MS in marketing, Sean has strong communications skills and technology knowledge. Sean also manages events and webinars. Finally, over the years Sean has become an expert in cleaning, analyzing and communicating large school facilities datasets. He joined 21CSF with five years of marketing experience within the technology field. He was also a Sustainable Economic Development Volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps stationed in Kyrgyzstan. While overseas, he taught at a local university and helped advocate for a youth homeless shelter in his community. Sean received a BA in Business Administration from the University of Washington, an MS in Nonprofit Management from the New School University for Social Research in New York City, and an MS in Marketing from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

Michelle Shirk, Policy Research Analyst

Michelle is a Policy Research Analyst at the 21st Century School Fund, where she is dedicated to advancing the quality of public-school facilities. In her role, she supports 21CSF as a consortium partner to the National Council on School Infrastructure (NCSI) by developing technical assistance resources that enable states and localities to enhance their stewardship of school buildings. With over a decade of experience teaching in high-poverty schools in Detroit, MI, and Brooklyn, NY, Michelle has witnessed firsthand the profound impact that facility conditions have on both educational outcomes and teacher retention. Her experiences have galvanized her commitment to improving teaching working conditions while also ensuring that all students learn in inspiring, safe, and healthy environments. She holds an MS in Education Policy from Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Elementary Education from Relay GSE, and a BA from the University of Michigan.

Kevin Sullivan, Senior Advisor

Kevin is a prominent education policy advisor who has made significant contributions to education reform efforts in the United States. He began his career on Capitol Hill before serving as a Senior Advisor and Speechwriter to Secretary Richard Riley. Kevin played a key role in the launch of the Secretary's "Annual State of Education Address," his annual "Back to School" bus trips, and the development of the E-rate program. One of Kevin's major contributions was his work on school modernization, where he wrote a series of national reports on the Baby Boom Echo alerting the nation to record-breaking enrollment in public schools and the lack of school facilities to educate these children. Kevin also organized the first National Summit on School Design in 1998 and co-authoring a report entitled "Schools as Centers of Community: A Citizen's Guide for Planning and Design." He is currently a strategist for the Redesign America’s School program, which seeks to design the next generation of resilient green schools in a post-COVID-19 environment.

21CSF has worked with Shelton Lee, Jr for over 25 years developing a rich cache of knowledge, resources and tools. Shelton and Mary have partnered to create innovative technology tools such as FORMAT-Pro®, decision-support software for long-range K-12 school facility planning; School Boundary Planner, a web-based solution that played an important role in the DCPS boundary planning project; School Facilities Joint-Use Cost Calculator, a web-based tool that helps school system leaders calculate fair fees; and many other technology tools.  Shelton has built our websites, including database structure to help us manage extensive cache of data, reports, testimony and other materials generated from local advocacy. In Shelton’s day job, he has worked on most of the key information technology challenges that are in the news—e.g. technology architecture design for green cards for INS, no-fly lists for Homeland Security, and business reporting for the SEC.  Shelton is a native Washingtonian, who went through DCPS.  He started his career in DCPS managing facilities.  He established the first asbestos database for DCPS, managed the DCPS data for firecode violations during the Parents United lawsuit, built capacity software for updating school utilizations, and developed document management software for the DCPS facility director’s assistant.