Alan M. Blankstein is Founder and President of the HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education), a not-for-profit organization whose Honorary Chair is Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. HOPE supports educational leaders over time in creating school cultures where failure is not an option for any student. Alan authored the award-winning book, Failure Is Not an Option®: Six Principles That Guide Student Achievement in High-Performing Schools. Now in its second edition, it has become the gold standard of creating and sustaining learning communities. 

The HOPE Foundation launched the professional learning communities movement in educational circles, first by bringing W. Edwards Deming and later Peter Senge to light in a series of Shaping America’s Future forums and PBS video conferences from 1989 to 1992. The HOPE Foundation now provides some 20 conferences annually, highlighting their long-term successes in sustaining student achievement in districts and regions in 17 states and parts of Canada and South Africa.  

A former “high risk” youth, Alan began his career in education as a music teacher and has worked in youth-serving organizations since 1983, including the March of Dimes, Phi Delta Kappa, and the National Educational Service (now Solution Tree), which he founded in 1987 and directed for 12 years.  

In addition to authorship of this award-winning book, Alan is publisher of three Failure Is Not an Option video series and, with Paul Houston, is senior editor of the 13-volume The Soul of Educational Leadership series.  Alan also coauthored the Reaching Today’s Youth curriculum and has published articles in Educational Leadership, The School Administrator, Executive Educator, High School Magazine, Reaching Today’s Youth, and Inside the Workshop. Alan has also provided keynote presentations and workshops for virtually every major educational organization.  

Alan served on the Harvard International Principals Centers advisory board, as board member for Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, as Co-Chair of Indiana University’s Neal Marshall Black Culture Center’s Community Network, and as advisor to the Faculty and Staff for Student Excellence (FASE) mentoring program. He also served as advisory board member for the Forum on Race, Equity, and Human Understanding with the Monroe County Schools in Indiana and on the Board of Trustees for the Jewish Child Care Agency (JCCA), in which he was once a youth in residence.