Blake Nathan

Blake Nathan understood the value of African-American children being paired with African-American teachers. And so he founded the Educate Me Foundation, an organization that serves as a placement service for black teachers where their talent and empathetic nature are most needed. “I realized the power of an educational environment where faculty and staff mirrored the student body during my undergraduate at studies at Tennessee State University,” he said.

Before serving as a teacher and tutor in Indianapolis, Blake was a Woodrow Wilson National Teaching Fellow and earned a master’s degree in Technology with an emphasis in Education from Purdue University. He also attended the Harvard Urban Principal National Leadership Institute in 2014, where “I dug deeper into the issues of race, culture, socioeconomics, and social justice in diverse classrooms around the nation.”

He earned a second masters degree, in Educational Leadership. But classroom teaching informed him. “I needed to find a way to change the education system from within,” he said. “I wanted the presence of African American males, and teachers of color in general to not be a rarity, but normality. This was my inspiration for founding Educate ME Foundation, to create an avenue to inspire more future educators of color.”