Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan have announced that James H. Shelton III will be heading the education arm of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a philanthropic organization. Shelton is a former deputy secretary of the United States Department of Education.
Shelton previously headed the education efforts at the Gates Foundation, USA Today reported. Shelton was also the president of an education technology company.
As part of the Obama administration, Shelton "help[ed] run programs that aimed to improve education and combat poverty in urban and rural neighborhoods," according to Mercury News. Shelton was also said to have supervised a fund that provided grants to both education agencies and nonprofit organization who were working to enhance student achievement creatively.
Facebook Initiative To Focus On Two Main Areas
"Priscilla's work as a pediatrician and a teacher has taught her how important life outside the classroom is to a child's ability to learn inside it. And now Jim will bring all of his own experience in improving personalized learning and helping underserved communities," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. Personalized learning and underserved communities will be the two main areas of the Chan Zuckerberg Education Initiative, Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg said that the Initiative will seek "to empower teachers and parents to bring personalized learning to their schools." He added that they will also focus on eradicating obstacles to success for the most vulnerable kids.
Facebook Hiring Part Of Growing Trend
The New York Times reported that Shelton's hiring in Facebook is part of a trend of government officials going to work for large technological companies. Former press secretary Jay Caney is now the senior vice president for corporate affairs at Amazon while former Obama senior adviser David Plouffe is Uber's chief adviser and board member.
Last March, former education secretary Arne Duncan was called in by the Emerson Collective "to lead an effort focused on young people in Chicago." The Emerson Collective was set up by the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs.
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