We hold the pointer to the words, the numbers, the alphabet.
Love for another generation.
Shelter of hope for another generation,
Life for our children.
--Tillie Olsen, "Utterance"
Nancy Hoffman has guided the activities of JFF’s Youth Cluster's activities since 2002. She directs the Early College High School Initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She also leads JFF work on dual enrollment policies and practices, as well as JFF’s undertaking toward making college opportunity affordable, a major initiative of Lumina Foundation for Education.
Dr. Hoffman’s career spans work in high schools and higher education. She came to JFF from Brown University, where she was Senior Lecturer in Education and also served as Director of the President’s Office and Secretary of the Brown Corporation. Previously, at Temple University, she served as Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies, Presidential Fellow, and director of the University Honors Program, with faculty appointments in English and women’s studies.
Hoffman has held posts as Academic Services Dean at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Program Officer at the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. She was a founder and faculty member of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. At the University of Massachusetts, she also ran the Center for the Improvement of Teaching. She has held teaching positions in English and comparative literature at the University of California Santa Barbara, Portland State University, and MIT. For many summers, she co-convened the Academic Environment Unit of HERS Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration.
Hoffman holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She chaired the board of directors of the Feminist Press, the oldest women’s press in the United States, from 2002 to 2006. She serves on Massachusetts Board of Higher Education. In addition to her publications for Jobs for the Future, Hoffman is the author most recently of Women's True Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching (Harvard Education Publishing Group).