Harris Ferrell

Harris Ferrell has spent most of his professional career scaling early-stage to mid-sized education companies (for-profit and not-for-profit). Harris joined APDS in January 2018, building out the management team and leading the company into its new phase of growth.

Prior to APDS, Harris was the Chief Operating Officer at Achievement First – a high-performing network of public charter schools in New York City, Connecticut, and Rhode Island – where he was on the executive team for 10+ years and played a leadership role in growing Achievement First's network of schools from 2500 students to well over 14,000 students. Before Achievement First, Harris was a co-founder and Senior Vice President of AdvancePath Academics, a company that designed and operated 1:1 high school academies for disengaged and out-of-school youth. Harris went to Yale as an undergraduate and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He has worked in education in many different facets: he was a classroom teacher through Teach For America in Houston, designed education software as Director of Product Management at SchoolNet, and has been an investor in educational ventures as an Associate Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund.