William Hill is the Executive Director of Rocketship Tennessee. Will is an exceptional educator and school administrator who leads the team overseeing our Tennessee region and he also serves on Rocketship’s Network Executive Team. Will passionately believes in providing servant leadership and intentional support for school teams and educational equity for all students.
Will knows firsthand what it’s like when students face barriers to academic opportunity based on their zip code. Although he tested into his school district’s rigorous gifted and talented program during elementary school, he later faced racism and classism from both individuals and the system at large during middle and high school. It wasn’t until college that Will realized how far this set him back.
After starting his career as a classroom teacher in Baltimore City Schools – the same school district he attended as a child – Will felt drawn to school leadership in order to help shape the larger systems that impact students’ educational experiences. While serving as a teacher and rising leader in Prince George’s County Public Schools, a mentor saw Will’s desire to disrupt the destiny of demographics that far too often define a student’s academic potential and encouraged him to open a public charter school. Following his mentor’s advice, Will successfully scaled a network of high-performing charter schools where his fifth grade students regularly scored in the 90th percentile or greater on reading achievement assessments. He then joined a national consulting firm, overseeing transformation projects for schools and districts across the country, including literacy reform, strategic planning, human capital strategy reform, leadership and teacher development programming, school redesign, and using data to drive improvements.
Will earned his Masters of Arts in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University, and completed post-graduate work in urban educational leadership at Loyola University in Maryland and Morgan State University. Will also holds a Masters of Divinity in Global Outreach from Grand Canyon University and is a doctoral candidate at Biola University.
When he’s not working, Will enjoys spending time with his wife and three children.
