From classroom teacher to Columbia-trained policy researcher to national school choice leader — Alissa brings a decade of ground-level experience to her role guiding NABML’s mission.
There is a particular kind of credibility that only comes from having done the work at every level — in the classroom, in the policy room, and in the community. Alissa Jacques Saint-Pierre has done all three, and it is precisely that breadth that makes her one of the most important voices in NABML’s orbit.
Alissa serves as Board Chair of the National Association of Black Microschool Leaders, bringing to the role more than a decade of experience at the intersection of education, policy, and family advocacy. By day, she is the Navigation Partnerships Manager at the National School Choice Awareness Foundation (NSCAF), where she leads state-based partnerships that serve more than 86,000 families annually — helping parents navigate the increasingly complex landscape of school options available to their children.
Her path to that work was anything but linear, and that is exactly what makes it worth tracing. She began her career as an AmeriCorps Fellow before stepping into a classroom at Democracy Prep Harlem, where she taught elementary school and developed the ground-level instincts that would inform everything that came after. She went on to earn a Master of Arts in Sociology of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University — the kind of credential that sharpens a practitioner’s eye for the structural forces shaping what happens inside a school building — and a Bachelor of Arts from New York University, where she graduated with University Honors.
In 2019, as an Urban Leaders Fellow in New Orleans, Alissa moved from the classroom to the capitol — co-authoring legislation to restructure oversight of underperforming charter schools. That experience, combined with her work as an adjunct instructor and strategic communicator, gave her a rare ability to translate between the language of systems and the lived experience of families.
That translation work is, in many ways, what drew her to NABML. Black families navigating the school choice landscape face a system that was not designed for them — one where the options are expanding faster than the infrastructure to help families access them equitably. NABML’s work to build that infrastructure, to put Black-led microschools on the map and Black families in the driver’s seat of their children’s education, is a mission Alissa knows from multiple angles. As Board Chair, she brings strategic oversight and a network built across years of state and national education work.
In addition to her roles at NSCAF and NABML, Alissa serves on the Junior Board of Advocates for Children of New York and is a 2025 Legal Education Opportunity (LEO) Fellow with the New York State Unified Court System — a fellowship that speaks to her ongoing commitment to understanding how legal systems shape the educational experiences of young people. She lives in New York City with her husband and a four-year-old pup.
“Black families navigating the school choice landscape face a system that was not designed for them — one where the options are expanding faster than the infrastructure to help families access them equitably. That is the gap NABML is closing.”
NABML is fortunate to have a Board Chair who has seen this movement from every angle — as a teacher, as a policy author, as a navigator, and as a community leader. Alissa’s leadership ensures that the decisions guiding NABML’s growth are grounded in both strategic clarity and lived understanding of what families actually need.
