The Team
Kareem Weaver, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Kareem is committed to improving literacy rates in California and across the country by engaging stakeholders around the systematic structures needed to cultivate excellent reading outcomes for all students.
Kareem previously led the Western Region for New Leaders, a leader development organization that supports the professional growth of teachers and administrators and prepares them to serve schools and communities desiring improved outcomes. Prior to New Leaders, Kareem was an award-winning teacher and administrator in Oakland, California, and Columbia, South Carolina. His experiences as a teacher, principal, and program leader provide critical insight to the work he does at FULCRUM.
Kareem has an undergraduate degree from Morehouse College, and a master's in Clinical-Community Psychology from the University of South Carolina. He is a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee, and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the National Council on Teacher Quality. His professional heroine is the late, great Marva Collins.
Liza Finkelstein, Co-Founder
Liza taught ESL, English and Literacy intervention in Hunter’s Point and the Mission district for SFUSD.
Liza has continued to work toward high quality, equitable education for all by serving for almost a decade on the advisory board of New Leaders, a national non-profit that recruits and trains catalytic leaders for transformative change in underserved urban public schools.
Carrie Simon
Carrie’s arrival at FULCRUM follows 5 years of leadership in several organizations, including Defy Ventures and the CROP Organization, that support people who are leaving prison integrate back into their communities.
Carrie’s desire to put a stop to the “school-to-prison pipeline” led her to literacy – one of the most effective ways to increase an individual’s ability to thrive in the information age.
Carrie's strengths include strategy, project management, and operations. Prior to her work in social justice, Carrie spent more than a dozen disenchanted years in the asset management industry in New York City and San Francisco.