Alexandra Chung Rouse is the Houston Endowment’s New Education Program Officer

Alexandra Chung Rouse recently joined the Houston Endowment as its program officer for education. She comes to the Houston Endowment from the community education partnership organization, New Schools for Baton Rouge (NSBR), where she served as its chief of staff for nearly four years. This position saw her leading the organization in its efforts to improve the quality of the public school system which she herself attended.  During her tenure, Rouse managed NSBR’s programmatic and educational investments of more than $3 million annually. She also doubled its staff and led a successful $5 million-per-year fundraising campaign.

Prior to this, she worked at Teach for America for seven years, first hired as a program director in 2007. After about two years, she was promoted to the position of director of community partnerships and alumni affairs. Always moving up, she would finish off her last two years at Teach for America as managing director of teacher and alumni leadership. Rouse’s own education includes a bachelor’s degree in political science from Louisiana State University and postgraduate studies in comparative ethnic conflict at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, having earned entrance as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. After her education, she started her career as a second grade teacher in the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. While teaching at Howell Park Elementary, Rouse was recognized as one of four national semi-finalists for the Sue Lehmenn Excellence in Teaching Award.

Knowing education reform and improvement was her calling, she then moved into higher administrative positions with organizations whose missions focused on improving education for all. This is when she went to work as a program director at Teach for America. With her entire career focused on the improvement of education, Rouse is a perfect fit to be the Houston Endowment’s new education program officer. This new role will have her helping to promote school systems that demonstrate effective education strategies by showing measurable improvement in results and increasing college attendance and completion. Alexandra Chung Rouse began work at the Houston Endowment on Oct. 1, 2018.