Dr. Lisa Coons is a career educator who served as the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2023 to 2025. Dr. Coons was appointed by Governor Youngkin to implement his key educational initiatives during his single term as Governor. As the state superintendent, Dr. Coons supported the development and rollout of a new accountability system, led a statewide attendance campaign resulting in historic drops in chronic absenteeism, implemented a Grow Your Own apprenticeship program to reduce teacher vacancies, , launched long term high school redesign strategy, oversaw the Governor’s cell-phone free initiative, instituted a family-based learning recovery program, spearheaded the focused implementation of the Virginia Literacy Act, and ensured the successful roll out of Virginia’s ALL in VA learning recovery program. Dr. Coons has served in multiple leadership roles in K12 education including as the chief academic officer for the Tennessee Department of Education to and through the pandemic. As the chief academic officer, she led all birth to grade-12 academic programming, including the implementation of the Tennessee Literacy Success Act, high-dosage pandemic recovery tutoring initiative, statewide Summer School, and the student learning needs within the student-weighted funding formula redesign.