Ascend Public Charter Schools achieved more than 20% academic growth in a single year across 17 Brooklyn K–12 campuses — and CEO Maryann Li credits three interconnected pillars: shifting organizational mindsets about what students can achieve, investing strategically in talent at every level, and building execution systems that enable rapid, data-driven intervention. Maryann challenges the assumption that incremental improvement is either realistic or responsible, arguing that a few bold decisions executed relentlessly — not a hundred disconnected tweaks — are what drive transformational outcomes. This episode is especially relevant for charter school CEOs, COOs, network leaders, and operations teams ready to move from incremental progress to step-change performance.

WHY THIS MATTERS FOR CHARTER SCHOOL LEADERS

Enrollment drives financial sustainability. Talent determines instructional quality. But the belief systems inside an organization determine both — because they set the ceiling on what leaders are willing to ask for and what staff believe is possible. Maryann Li's work at Ascend demonstrates that culture, talent strategy, and operational execution are not separate workstreams. They are interconnected levers that, when pulled together, produce outsized results.

For charter school CEOs, the mindset framework offers a concrete way to diagnose where an organization has normalized low expectations — and what it takes to dismantle that. For COOs and operations leaders, the data systems discussion is directly applicable: building infrastructure that delivers leading indicators rather than lagging results is an operational discipline, not just an academic one. And for finance leaders, Maryann's framing of schools as human-powered organizations reframes talent investment as a core financial strategy — not an overhead cost.

Interested in becoming a guest?

Contact us at podcast@buyq.org

Learn more: buyq.org/podcast