Nick Simmons has spent over a decade of leadership at the intersection of government, philanthropy and business to achieve large-scale social impact in the fields of workforce development, education and economic development.
In Connecticut, Nick most recently served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Ned Lamont and as a lead workforce development and education advisor, overseeing core initiatives, policies and investments for the Governor. In his role, Nick helped lead an overhaul of the state’s workforce system—helping build a new state Office of Workforce Strategy and was appointed by the Governor to lead the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet, a weekly gathering of the state’s workforce development leaders to set strategy and drive execution. He supported the creation and deployment of tens of millions of state dollars into quality workforce programming and collaborated with leaders of some of the state’s largest businesses to help address their workforce needs.
In K-12 education, Nick created and led the Everybody Learns Initiative, a groundbreaking $64M partnership with top telecommunication companies such as Comcast, Altice, Cox and others to deploy over 100,000 laptops and internet connections to students in Connecticut. It made Connecticut the state the first in the nation to close the K–12 digital divide. In 2021, Nick led creation of the LEAP program, a nationally celebrated home-visiting absenteeism intervention program that led to a measurable increase in attendance rates. Nick also helped direct over $200 million of state investment into economic development projects to strengthen downtown urban centers and enhance innovation at state universities.
In 2021, Nick was tapped by the Biden Administration to serve as a Senior Advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and was asked to help lead the effort to reopen schools during COVID-19, for 55 million students across the country and to support the investment of over $160 billion in federal funds into critical programs to close learning gaps, expand summer and after-school programs, increase high school workforce training opportunities, and build quality tutoring and mentorship programs.
Through his work Nick has partnered with business leaders, philanthropy, workforce development organizations, colleges, universities, and local community organizations to achieve large scale social impact results.
Nick began his career as a founding teacher and ultimately acting principal of one of the first middle schools for the Success Academy Charter School network in Harlem, New York. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University.