EIIF Welcomes Gene Hickok to the March 2009 Forum

The EIIF team is pleased to announce that Gene Hickok, Senior Policy Advisor for Dutko Worldwide and one of the most eloquent speakers on education in America will be speaking at the Education Industry Investment Forum March 9-11, 2009.

Gene Hickok, Senior Policy Advisor, Dutko Worldwide, image courtesy Dutko Worldwide site

Mr. Hickok is former Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Education Department and former Secretary of Pennsylvania's education agency.

Mark your calendars. For more information on the Education Industry Investment Forum, please visit the EIIF website.

Hickok profile at Education Week magazine:

Gene Hickok, seen here in his Education Department office, disdains the Washington insider culture. But those watching say he uses his charm and savvy to excel in that environment.

During six years as Pennsylvania's secretary of education, Hickok often faced a hostile roster of education advocacy organizations. He spent 16 years as a political science professor at Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pa., where his conservative politics set him apart from other faculty members. And he helped coordinate the defection of several state schools chiefs from a leading Washington advocacy group in 1995.

But now, holding the No. 3 position in the federal Department of Education, Hickok seems to be acquiring a leadership style that allows him to blaze a path toward his educational and political aims— without burning bridges. Spearheading the implementation of the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001—the Bush administration's signature educational endeavor— he appears to be adopting a more flexible tone and easing aside the ideological blinders some say he wore to Washington.