Dr. Annis Stubbs has spent over sixteen years building and leading the people functions of some of the most consequential organizations in American education. Her work is grounded in a simple premise: mission-driven institutions succeed or fail based on how well they recruit, develop, and retain the people who carry out the work — and that this is a discipline worth studying as rigorously as it is practiced.
She most recently served as Chief People Officer at Teach For America, where she held a series of senior leadership roles over the course of her tenure, including Senior Vice President of Leadership & Diversity, Senior Vice President of Strategy & Innovation, and founding Executive Director of TFA-Detroit — a role in which she built a regional operation from the ground up. Earlier in her career, she held leadership positions at The New Teacher Project (TNTP), Columbia University, and Sylvan Learning Centers.
Beyond the education sector, Dr. Stubbs has also built and led operating businesses. She co-founded and led a logistics enterprise that developed carrier partnerships with FedEx and Amazon — experience that has given her an operator's perspective on workforce planning, frontline retention, and scaling teams under real-world margin pressure, distinct from the nonprofit and academic contexts where she's spent most of her career.
Dr. Stubbs holds a Ph.D. from Michigan State University's top-ranked program in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy, a master's degree from Fordham University, and an undergraduate degree in English and Education. She is an Aspen Institute Fellow and a Resnick Scholar, and her thinking has been shaped as much by scholarship as by the operational demands of running people functions inside complex nonprofits.
Today, her focus is on translating what she's learned building talent systems inside large education nonprofits and operating businesses alike into frameworks other mission-driven leaders can use — through writing, advising, and the occasional stage.
note —on scale
Built TFA-Detroit from a founding team of one.
note —on rigor
Ph.D. research grounded in education policy, not just practice.
note —on range
Nonprofit, higher-ed, and operating-business contexts alike.