Catherine Suitor has spent two decades proving that schools can get better at scale, and she has the data to back it up.
As Executive Director of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools Foundation, Catherine has helped Alliance grow into one of the largest and most successful nonprofit charter networks in the country, serving 13,000 scholars across 26 schools in Los Angeles. When Alliance opened in 2004, LAUSD was graduating 49% of its students. Alliance has graduated nearly 100% from the start, and LAUSD's rate is now 82%.
In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Catherine Suitor to talk about what it takes to build schools that meet kids where they actually are, not where the system assumes they should be. Catherine breaks down Alliance's schedule redesign pilot, which has doubled teacher planning time without cutting scholar instruction, and explains why teacher retention and scholar outcomes both went up.
She also shares why Alliance has taken a deliberate pro-Black stance inside a 90% Latino network, and how the foundation is approaching AI as a tool to support educators rather than replace them. On fundraising, Catherine is clear: people basically want to do good, and the job is to give them the chance. Her line on serving students: equity is not equality, and people show up to the door with different needs.
Tune in to hear why Catherine believes the original promise of charters was never to take over public education, but to prove what was possible and bring everyone else along.
Chapters:
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01:23 Meet Catherine Suitor: Alliance Foundation Executive Director and lifelong California fundraiser
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01:48 From parochial school to The Breakfast Club: growing up across every kind of K-12
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09:42 Why a history major was the best preparation for the work she does today
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12:22 Central American solidarity in the eighties and the roots of her advocacy career
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15:13 Learning to fundraise on the job: press releases, phone banks, and the first ask
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22:10 Why fundraising is matchmaking, and what makes a great donor visit
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25:39 Going pro-Black inside a 90 percent Latino network: what Alliance learned from its scholars
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30:25 The original promise of charters: prove what works and bring everyone along
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33:01 Defensive advocacy and proactive advocacy: how Alliance is sharing what it knows
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42:21 Closing a school the right way: a year of community engagement and an LAUSD board member's request
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45:36 Doubling teacher planning time: the schedule redesign that is keeping educators in the profession
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46:26 AI as a tool for educators, with multilingual and special ed scholars at the center
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49:23 What younger leaders should take from the cycles she has seen across forty years of social change
Links:
Connect with Catherine Suitor on LinkedIn or explore the Alliance Foundation's work to learn more about what it takes to build and sustain great public schools at scale.
Stay strong.
Episode 29