Taylor Chapman is a passionate advocate for equality of opportunity, most recently as Senior Vice President of the NationSwell Council. A Texas native, Taylor was an undergraduate at Yale when his experiences volunteering at a New Haven public school opened his eyes to the inequities in our education system. He spent the next four years as a public school teacher: first at a high-poverty high school in Charlotte, NC with the Teach for America program, then at a public high school in Japan’s largely rural Kumamoto Prefecture via the JET Program. Looking to scale his impact, Taylor earned a Master in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, with a thesis focused on the reduction of human trafficking + modern slavery.
Upon graduation, Taylor joined McKinsey’s New York office to learn the classic private sector skill set; there, he served clients in private equity, insurance, utilities, oil + gas, banking, retail, and telecom. He then fought his way onto education-focused projects + secured a Public Sector Practice fellowship; in 2013, he did more education work than any McKinsey Associate in the western hemisphere.
In 2015, Taylor was recruited to build a new growth team at Remind, an education tech startup delivering a text-messaging platform for teachers to communicate with parents + students. Today, Remind is used in over 80% of US public schools, where it helps to boost parent engagement + student attendance. In 2017, Taylor joined the NationSwell team in order to grow + evolve the NationSwell Council, its nationwide community of accomplished, service-minded leaders + innovators, and to maximize the Council’s potential for positive impact on America’s most pressing challenges.
Taylor’s experience has left him convinced that human factors – innovative individuals, a relentless focus on solutions + what works, and a willingness to collaborate across sectors – while notionally small, in fact hold within them the keys to solving our biggest challenges.