Gabrielle Wyatt
The Highland Project
New York, NY
Gabrielle is the Founder of The Highland Project, an organization focused on building and sustaining a pipeline of Black women leading communities, institutions, and systems, resulting in the creation of multi-generational wealth and change in their communities. The Highland Project and Gabrielle have been featured on Essence, Blavity, and Bloomberg. At the end of 2021, The Highland Project announced its inaugural cohort of leaders, representing a $2.5M capital investment in 15 Black women across the country. Most recently, Gabrielle received the 2022 Choice-filled Lives Network’s Choice, Voice, Representation, and Justice Award and the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy’s Inaugural Changemakers Award for The Highland Project’s groundbreaking national research practice focused on centering Black women in defining the barriers to and solutions for multi-generational wealth in their communities.
Prior to founding The Highland Project, Gabrielle led major change initiatives in our nation’s largest and most complex school systems and shaped the investment strategy of leading national philanthropic initiatives. Most recently, she was a Partner at The City Fund, a $200 million effort founded by leading national philanthropists to support local education leaders to build local movements for systemic change in education. Gabrielle supported local education leaders across the nation to expand opportunities for students in public schools through strategic advising, board service, and philanthropic investments. During her tenure, Wyatt launched the City Leadership Fellowship, an executive leadership development program focused on empowering Black and Latinx leaders pursuing bold education visions. Before joining The City Fund, Gabrielle was the Chief Strategy Officer at Civic Builders. A non-profit focused on solving the facilities challenge for high-quality charter schools. Gabrielle led partnerships with the Walton Family Foundation and Laura and John Arnold Foundation to launch three national facilities funds.
Gabrielle is the former Executive Director of Strategy for Newark Public Schools, New Jersey's largest school district. She led the district's efforts to increase access to high-quality public schools, enrollment, and financial strategy. As a result of the district's focus on increasing students' opportunities in public schools, a recent study by CREDO at Stanford found Newark students are posting learning gains that outpace the state’s best-in-the-nation public school system. Previously, Gabrielle was the Associate Director of Portfolio Planning at the NYCDOE.
As a Baltimore native, Gabrielle began her career as a Baltimore County Public Schools Board of Education member. Gabrielle is a graduate of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and theHarvard Kennedy School. Gabrielle Wyatt is the proud daughter of two Baltimore educators, Mary Alice Thomas and Quentin Wyatt.
Overview
The Highland Project (THP) is building and sustaining a coalition of Black women leading education, communities, institutions, and systems, resulting in the creation of multi-generational wealth and change in the communities where they live and serve.
THP creates holistic solutions needed to bridge education outcomes to multi-generational economic outcomes by centering Black women as powerful changemakers. By building and sustaining a pipeline of interdisciplinary and intergenerational Black women leaders annually with access to community and trusting capital, THP is creating a coalition of cross-sector leaders that will address the systemic challenges acting as barriers to advancing educational, economic, and wealth outcomes for Black communities.
With continued support from the Boulder Fund, THP will continue to invest deeply in Black women leaders with unrestricted capital, investments in infrastructure, and through movement building work.
