Aurora Lora serves as a senior associate at Insight Education Group.
Prior to joining Insight, Aurora served as the Chief of Schools for Uplift Education, a high-performing charter school network with 43 schools across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. She also served as the superintendent for Oklahoma City Public Schools where she was responsible for leading and overseeing 46,000 students and 5,000 staff members.
During her time as superintendent, Aurora worked with her team to implement new, more rigorous academic standards and increased the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams. She started an Office of School Climate and Culture to provide more discipline support and coaching for schools. Overall suspensions decreased by 30% and long-term suspensions decreased by 81% during her tenure. She also helped guide the district through a multi-year state budget crisis, and helped pass a $180M bond. Additionally, her team developed a mental health task force which increased the number of counselors and social workers in schools, and helped her district earn “Community Eligibility Provision” status to ensure that every child at every school eats for free in Oklahoma City Public Schools. What she is most proud of from her time as superintendent was the work that she did with her school board to pass an equity policy. Prior to becoming a superintendent, Aurora served as an Assistant Superintendent for the Dallas Independent School District, Executive Director of PK-12 Schools for Seattle Public Schools, a middle/high school principal in Portland Public Schools, and an elementary school teacher in the Houston Independent School District.
Aurora believes every child deserves access to a high quality education and that the key to making that happen requires that districts ensure they have a great teacher in every classroom, a great principal in every building, a rigorous curriculum, strong central office systems to support the work of schools, and an engaged community that will partner with districts to reach their goals.
Aurora holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in education policy and management from Harvard University.