Dacia Toll is the President and co-CEO of Achievement First, a non-profit charter management organization which operates 22 public charter schools in Connecticut and New York. Dacia led the founding team and served for six years as the principal of nationally acclaimed Amistad Academy, named Connecticut’s 2006 Distinguished School of the Year. Under Dacia’s leadership, Amistad Academy students—who are selected by blind lottery from the City of New Haven, 98 percent African-American or Hispanic, and nearly 80 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—consistently made dramatic student achievement gains to score on par with students from some of Connecticut’s wealthiest communities. The success of Amistad Academy was the subject of a nationally-televised PBS documentary, “Closing the Achievement Gap.”

Drawing on Amistad Academy’s knowledge and best practices and a desire to have greater impact, Dacia co-founded Achievement First in 2003 and has since opened additional schools throughout Connecticut and New York and will expand to Rhode Island in the fall of 2013. Achievement First currently serves more than 7,000 urban students in grades K-12.

Dacia received her B.A. from the University of North Carolina, where she was a Morehead Scholar, and a Master’s degree from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She then received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a teaching certificate from Yale University.