Terry Grobe

Program Director, Back on Track

Contact Terry Grobe

Terry Grobe is a program director on JFF's Pathways through Postsecondary team. She works with city, state, and national initiatives directed at improving outcomes for struggling students and out-of-school youth. Ms. Grobe currently leads a Gates Foundation-funded Postsecondary Success Initiative, working with three national youth-serving networks—YouthBuild USA, The National Youth Employment Coalition, and The Corps Network—to improve postsecondary completion rates for older youth. She also leads a U.S. Department of Education-funded effort to provide dropout prevention and recovery-related technical assistance to districts and states that received High School Graduation Initiative grants.

Formerly, Ms. Grobe led JFF’s work with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Multiple Education Pathways Blueprint Initiative, a seven-city venture to grow new education options and raise high school graduation rates in these communities. 

Before joining JFF, Ms. Grobe served at the Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Corporation, directing Diploma Plus, a national alternative school statewide network of alternative schools and youth programs in Massachusetts. She developed and co-convened (with the Boston Private Industry Council) the ongoing Youth Transition’s Task Force that works to raise the city’s graduation rates. Previously, she served as senior staff for the Center for Youth and Communities at Brandeis University. She has also been a teacher at and director of alternative high schools, on staff at the internationally recognized Boston Compact, and project manager in the Governor’s Education Office in Massachusetts. 

Ms. Grobe holds a Bachelor's in education from the University of Nebraska and Master's of Education in secondary school administration from Northeastern University.