Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The life sciences sector is a major driver of Central Indiana’s economy and a key contributing factor to the vitality of Indianapolis. While Indiana’s life sciences sector is robust – wages for the sector have grown to $5.8 billion in 2018, and venture capital investments over the last four years totaled $360 million – competition is intensifying as other markets also compete to attract the investments, companies and talent required for continued growth. Cross-sector collaboration, coordination and alignment are key to ongoing economic prosperity in Indianapolis and elsewhere around the state. To ensure the continued strength of the […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. High-performing school leaders have a substantial impact on student achievement. Studies that aim to isolate the impact of leaders on student test scores find that moving from a low- to a high-quality principal can mean several additional months of learning. And the impacts are larger for low-income students. But can schools do anything to boost the quality of their school leaders? Or are the traits that lead to better leaders too difficult to predict or develop and the best leaders too hard to retain? To help answer these questions, the Wallace Foundation funded and provided […]