It is my great pleasure to announce the appointment of Gary Huggins as the new Chief Executive Officer of the National Summer Learning Association.

Gary has more than 15 years of experience in leading education and environmental policy organizations, most recently as Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind, a body he has led for nearly five years.  The Commission is a bipartisan effort to identify and build support for improvements in federal education policy to spur academic achievement and close achievement gaps. Gary also has led the Institute's efforts to build partnerships to spur innovation and drive increased investment in leading edge nonprofit and for-profit educational programs. His work at Aspen followed years of leadership roles in the education field in which Gary was instrumental in bringing together strong bipartisan networks.

Gary will formally assume his post at the Association on Jan. 17, 2012, but he has agreed to speak and hopes to meet many of you at the Association's Summer Changes Everything™ national summer learning conference in San Francisco, just a couple of weeks from now on Nov. 15 and 16.

Gary was selected after a comprehensive national search that yielded many fine candidates for the position. The quality and quantity of applicants reflect the importance of the work the Association is doing to build the summer learning field, and the growing consensus among education leaders about the need for more learning time for young people.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Matthew Boulay, a longtime Association board member who stepped in to serve as Interim CEO over the past 11 months. Matthew, who founded the Association's predecessor organization, Teach Baltimore, as a student at Johns Hopkins University, has shown unwavering dedication in his willingness to lead the organization for as long as it took to conduct a thorough search for the right CEO. Now that we have found that person, Matthew will remain at the helm until Gary's January start date, then hand over the reins.

Thank you for your continuing support of the Association. I look forward to introducing Gary to you at our conference and over the coming months, and to an exciting future under his leadership.