Who We Are
Southerners for Fair School Funding, which is powered by Ed Trust – Tennessee, is an initiative that supports organizations and advocates across the South who are building a movement to fairly fund every school. We believe Southern progress is national progress. And we can’t make progress until Southern states move from spending the least amount of money on their students to leading the nation by funding their needs adequately and fairly.
We offer training and technical assistance on school funding advocacy, coalition building, and effective messaging. We support organizations and advocates in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Together we can transform school funding across the South, and create generational change for students.
Our Team
Gini Pupo-Walker
The Education Trust – Tennessee
Gini brings more than 20 years of work in education as a teacher, administrator, and nonprofit leader. She serves as the Executive Director of Ed Trust – Tennessee, where she works alongside advocacy organizations and stakeholders to increase educational opportunity and achievement among historically underserved students.
Under Gini’s leadership, Ed Trust – Tennessee created and leads the Tennessee Alliance for Equity in Education, which is a coalition of civil rights, social justice, and education organizations and advocates working to promote educational equity for underserved students. The Alliance successfully led a coalition of advocates to support school funding reform in Tennessee, which helped set the table for the transformation of the state’s funding formula to one that is focused on student needs through a weighted, flexible and transparent funding system.
Qubilah Huddleston
The Education Trust
As policy lead on the P-12 policy team, Qubilah informs and manages Ed Trust’s policy positions on equitable school funding. She is responsible for analyzing state and federal policy proposals and supporting state partners and advocates in achieving more equitable state funding formulas for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.
Prior to joining Ed Trust, Qubilah worked as a senior policy analyst at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, where she analyzed the District’s education policy and budget proposals with an eye toward racial and economic equity. While there, she served on numerous working groups and policy committees designed to improve the District’s funding formula.
Alexza Barajas Clark, Ph.D.
The Education Trust – Tennessee
Alexza is a communications strategist with over 20 years experience in storytelling and issue advocacy. As Chief of Staff for Tennessee at The Education Trust, Alexza advises the Executive Director and develops strategic goals and advocacy campaigns to advance the organization’s mission to advocate for equitable education for historically underserved students across Tennessee and the American South. Recognized for her leadership in education justice, she is part of the Pahara-NextGen Fellowship, an initiative that identifies exceptional senior leaders across the country working to shape the future of the educational excellence and equity movement in America.
Prior to her work in the education justice movement, Alexza was a producer for some of the nation’s most high-profile television news programs, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, and The Nightly News with Brian Williams.
A daughter of Mexican immigrants and native of Southern California, Alexza earned a doctoral degree in communication studies from the University of Utah, a master’s degree in mediated communication from Pepperdine University, and an undergraduate degree in rhetoric and broadcast journalism from California State University, Long Beach.
Juliana Hoover Potash, MPP
The Education Trust – Tennessee
Juliana Hoover Potash is the senior manager of advocacy and engagement for Ed Trust’s Southerners for Fair School Funding initiative. The goal of this work is to close opportunity gaps for students in the South by advancing more equitable ways of funding schools. In this role, Juliana builds regional partnerships, creates advocacy resources, and supports coalitions in Southern states.
Previously, Juliana worked at P3 Consulting, where she provided strategic support to education-focused foundations and nonprofit organizations in Tennessee. She also previously worked with the Ed Trust-Tennessee team as a P-12 policy fellow. During that fellowship, she launched a research project on Tennessee’s English Learners and supported the policy team during legislative session. Juliana has worked as a graduate fellow at the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) and helped the Public Education Foundation in Chattanooga improve an online college selection tool for Hamilton County students. As a graduate student, she also presented at a global competition hosted by the University of Oxford about systemic inequities in Nashville’s school system. Before moving to Nashville, Juliana worked as a social science researcher in the U.S. and in Malaysia.
Originally from North Carolina, she holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and Asian & Middle Eastern studies from Duke University and a master’s in education policy from Vanderbilt University.
Get in touch
Send us an email at fundsouthernschools@edtrust.org or fill out the form below.
