This episode of Supply Chain Now features Jonathan Starr and Trudy Hall. Jonathan Starr authored It Takes A School, published by Macmillan Henry Holt in February 2017. It tells the story of Jonathan’s founding and heading the Abaarso School of Science and Technology, a non-profit educational organization in Somaliland. Abaarso School has broken a decades long drought in Somali education with unprecedented success, including placing students at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, and MIT. In total the school has sent 150 students to continue their education globally. In 2017 Jonathan co-founded Barwaaqo University in Somaliland, the first all-female boarding university in the country. In 2019, he co-founded Kaabe Schools, with the mission of spreading high quality Montessori-inspired K-12 education throughout Somaliland and beyond. In 2018, he spoke at Marist College as part of Marist selecting It Takes a School as its first-year student required reading. From 2004 – 2008, Jonathan founded and led Flagg Street Capital, a private investment firm that managed $170 million of investor assets. Prior to Flagg Street, Jonathan worked at SAB Capital, Blavin and Company, and Fidelity Investments. Jonathan graduated from Emory University, where he received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in Economics and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Trudy Hall had spent her professional career as an administrator in the world of independent education. As head of two girls boarding schools , (Emma Willard School and Miss Hall’s School), and a senior administrator at four others, (Culver Academies, Hutchison School, Stoneleigh-Burnham, Forest Ridge), she has focused her professional energy on programs that inspire students to develop their distinctive voice and personal passions. Former Head of School at Emma Willard School for 17 years, Trudy also served 14 years on the board of the National Coalition of Girls Schools, and as President for 4 of those years, during which the Global Forum for Girls Education was conceived and trademarked. Trudy served as the President of the Board for Leadership and Design, a non-profit that designs leadership experience for those creating the future of education. Formally educated at St. Lawrence University, Harvard Graduate School of Education and Duke University, Trudy, is a ferociously curious peripatetic who, for the moment, resides in both Seattle, Washington and Somaliland.
