Christopher Maher

As the Superintendent-in-Residence at Cambiar Education, Chris Maher leads multiple initiatives, including Cambiar Catalyst and Project Velocity. Through this work, he supports the impact of innovative K12 system leaders and develops strategic partnerships with school districts, non-profit organizations, and education entrepreneurs to authentically engage their stakeholders in the co-creation of solutions to entrenched challenges and to identify opportunities to increase their impact. Maher also coaches superintendents, executive teams, and other systems leaders. He has had the privilege to coach K-12 systems leaders for nearly a decade, with experience coaching leaders from diverse backgrounds and experiences, ranging from superintendents of large urban districts to small suburban and rural districts. Prior to joining Cambiar, Maher served for four years as Superintendent in Providence, where he restructured the district to increase resources for schools, dramatically reduced out-of-school suspensions, worked with teachers to increase the use of high-quality instructional materials, decreased the number of schools identified as low-performing, partnered with student leadership to implement policy changes,, increased mental health support for students, and led the advocacy that provided state funding for multilingual learners for the first time in the state’s history. Maher also served as the President of Mass Insight Education, a non-profit organization that works nationally on school improvement and district transformation. In that role, he worked closely with Superintendents, School Boards, and their teams to improve academic outcomes by creating better conditions for success in the lowest-performing schools and neighborhoods within districts. Maher has worked in a number of different roles in his career in education, as a teacher, principal, district administrator, public school advocate, and in other leadership capacities. He has worked with local school districts and state agencies throughout the country to identify sustainable and scalable solutions to improve outcomes for all students. Maher resides in Providence with his wife and three children, all of whom attend or have graduated from Providence public schools.