Jessica Reid Sliwerski is CEO of Open Up Resources, a nonprofit whose mission is opening doors to education
equity by making high-quality curriculum openly accessible to educators. Jessica is also the Founder of Ignite!
Reading, a nonprofit whose mission is to ensure that every student is an independent reader by the start of
second grade through high-dosage 1:1 reading tutoring via Zoom. Previously, Jessica was the co-founder and
Chief Academic Officer at the adaptive literacy software company LightSail Education. Her instructionallyfocused product vision brought numerous awards to the organization, including the Digital Promise and Edsurge Digital Innovation in Learning Award, two ASU-GSV Return on Education VentureEd awards, and a
Readers’ Choice Top 100 recognition from District Administration magazine.
Jessica began her career as a Teach For America teacher in the Bronx, NY before becoming a founding
teacher then an Assistant Principal at Success Academy Charter Schools. Wanting to bring instructional best
practices from the charter world to district schools, she became a network Literacy Specialist at The Urban
Assembly, a New York City-based nonprofit organization overseeing more than 10,000 students in secondary
schools.
Jessica’s work in K–12 education was profiled in The Wall Street Journal and Steven Brill’s book Class
Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools, and she participated in the documentary film The Lottery.
She has a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from UCLA and a Master’s in Education from Pace
University.