Our Team & Partners

Co-Founder & Senior Fellow Emeritus

Paul T. O’Neill

ptoneill@centerforlearnerequity.org

Paul O’Neill is the Co-founder and Senior Fellow Emeritus of the Center for Learner Equity. His commitment to equity and opportunities for all students to learn comes from his lifelong grappling with learning disabilities and ADHD.

Paul is an education attorney, professor, and author. He has extensive experience in guiding education organizations through challenges and growth. Throughout his career, he has advised schools, authorizers, networks, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and philanthropies on the rules and complexities that apply to educational organizations as well as on effective board governance. Paul’s professional experience spans the education sector. He served as General Counsel of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, one of the nation’s leading charter school authorizing offices. He has also served for years as a lawyer in private practice, for boutique law firms specializing in education law as well as large corporate law firms, and as in-house counsel for a large charter school management organization.

Paul is currently a Partner and Co-Chair of the Education Law practice group at Barton Gilman LLP, which features the largest charter school law practice east of California. He is a former Associate Director of the Newgrange School and Educational Outreach Center in New Jersey, which serves individuals with learning disabilities. On the academic side, Paul serves as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where he teaches courses on education law and policy. He is a frequent guest lecturer at other universities on a range of education reform topics and is the author of several books and numerous scholarly and professional articles.

Paul holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and an M.Ed. from Teachers College. When Paul is not working, he is committed to community service. He helped found charter schools in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Washington D.C., and New Orleans. He is on the board of the NYC Autism Charter Schools and Digital Pioneers Academy Charter School in Washington, D.C., and the Board of Governors of Union College of New Jersey. He served for several years as Chair of the Education & Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and on the Professional Advisory Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. He and his wife, Mari, had three kids – Katie, Tom and Jack. Paul likes to take unreasonably long walks, enjoys Antiques Roadshow, and is devoted to pizza.

Senior Advisor & Co-Founder

Lauren Morando Rhim

lmrhim@centerforlearnerequity.org

Lauren Morando Rhim is the Senior Advisor and Co-Founder of The Center for Learner Equity (CLE). She provides CLE strategic vision and oversees various research, advocacy, coalition development, and field-based capacity-building projects. Lauren’s recent work includes conducting secondary analyses of the federal Civil Rights Data Collection, examining the challenges associated with developing equitable special education funding formulas and developing a strategic city-based framework for effectively and efficiently educating students with disabilities. Lauren comes to this work out of a passion for and commitment to social justice and an optimist’s belief that we can make public schools work for all learners.

Before founding CLE, Morando Rhim worked as a researcher, consultant, and advocate, striving to identify strategies to create and sustain high-quality public schools for all students. She has published extensively about school reform and regularly consults with federal, state, and local policy leaders and practitioners. As the founder of LMR Consulting, she specialized in pressing education reform issues pertaining to school turnaround, charter schools, special education, and state and district support for school improvement. She was formerly a senior consultant at Public Impact, where she conducted her own work and led project teams to produce research, evaluation, technical assistance, and provide direct support to clients. As a faculty Research Associate at the University of Maryland, she conducted research, external consulting, and evaluations. While at UMD, Lauren directed Project Intersect, a four-year, federally funded study of special education in charter schools, and was a consultant to three other related initiatives: Project SEARCH, SPEDTACS, and the TA Customizer.

Lauren holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont, a Master’s from The George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from the University of Maryland. When Lauren is not working, she is committed to community service at the local level, having served on both her locally elected school board and a charter school board. She currently serves on the Special Education Leader Fellowship (SELF) board in New Orleans and The Family Place, a parent-child center in her hometown. She enjoys swimming, cycling, and spending as much time outside as possible. She lives in Norwich, Vermont, with her unruly dog, Tucker, and occasionally, her two adult children.