Committee Members

Erika Beltran is the deputy director of policy and Tarrant County regional director at Leadership ISD. A native of Fort Worth, Erika has worked in education for over a decade on issues ranging from early childhood education to assessments and accountability. Erika started her career as a Teach For America corps member in Houston, Texas, where she taught bilingual elementary school for three years.

After teaching, Erika worked as a fellow at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent five years in Washington, D.C. where she worked as a senior education policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza, the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization.

Since returning to Texas in 2012, Erika has worked with several nonprofits focused on policy, advocacy and community organizing for educational equity. Erika served as an elected member of the Texas State Board of Education from 2014 to 2018. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Williams College and a master’s degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas – Austin.

Dr. Ken Helvey has more than 30 years of experience in education. He has served as a teacher, coach, assistant principal, athletic director, director of finance and technology and assistant superintendent for student services. He retired as Allen ISD superintendent in 2013.

Ken has successfully led numerous change processes in strategic planning, curriculum and professional development, master planning, technology planning, program analysis for budget development and tax ratification election. He was part of the North Texas Regional Consortium of school districts that adopted the Visioning Document, Creating a New Vision for Public Education in Texas, as the framework for school transformation. This group initiated the statewide movement to examine the assessment system that ultimately resulted in the passage of HB 5, which drastically reduced the number of required state assessments and provided more flexibility for student college and career choices.

Ken earned his Bachelor of Science from Tarleton State University, Masters of Education Administration from Texas A&M Commerce, and Doctorate of Educational Administration from the University of North Texas.

As a Certified Public Accountant, Mr. Johnson has over 33 years of Texas school finance experience. He currently serves as a school finance consultant for Region 11 Education Service Center. Prior to joining the ESC, he was a deputy superintendent for Fort Worth ISD. Additionally, he has performed financial service work for the Grapevine-Colleyville, Richardson and Plano ISDs.

Dr. Carlos Martinez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1964 and lived in New York City from 1966 to 1971. He returned to Puerto Rico and graduated from high school in 1982. He is the dean of the School of Education at Texas Wesleyan University.  He has spent most of his academic career training urban teachers for classrooms comprised of English Language Learning students. His research interest and publications have been focused on language assessment, language acquisition and attitudes and perceptions regarding special language programs and bilingual education. 

Dr. Martinez's study abroad experience began in 1993 when he took a group of 21 students to Costa Rica. Since then, he has lead study abroad projects to Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Croatia, India, and Nepal.

Mr. Moore practices with Bourland, Wall & Wenzel, P.C., a Fort Worth, Texas law firm representing individuals, closely held and family businesses, professional practices and charitable organizations within its areas of legal practice. Mr. Moore’s practice focuses on representation of nonprofit organizations and social enterprises. Mr. Moore advises clients on a wide range of tax and legal compliance issues including organization of various types of nonprofit and social enterprise entities, obtaining and maintaining tax-exempt status, risk management, employment issues, governance and other business issues, as well as handling IRS audits, attorney general investigations and advising on litigation matters for his exempt organization clients.

Mr. Moore was born in Lubbock, Texas on December 11, 1973. He earned a B.A., cum laude, from Texas A&M University and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Baylor Law School where he served as editor-in-chief of the Baylor Law Review. Mr. Moore was admitted to practice law in Texas in 2000 and before the United States District Court, Northern District of Texas and United States Tax Court in 2001. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas; Tarrant County Bar Association; American Bar Association (Business Law Section, Section of Taxation); College of the State Bar; and is a fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation. Mr. Moore is an elected member of the American Law Institute. 

Mr. Moore is an adjunct professor at Baylor Law School where he has taught Nonprofit Organizations since 2001. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Texas School of Law and Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law on nonprofit organization topics. Additionally, he writes and speaks regularly on tax and legal compliance issues. Mr. Moore is co-author of the third and fourth editions of Bourland, Wall & Wenzel, P.C.’s publication, Keeping Your Church Out of Court.

Norie Pride-Womack currently serves as principal/founder of NEPW Consulting, a non-profit focused consulting firm specializing in strategic growth and organizational design.

Prior to founding her own practice, Norie served as the chief operating officer of KIPP St. Louis—a $28M budget Charter Management Organization comprised of 5 schools, 2,000 students in the 2018-19 school year—for over four years. At KIPP her central charge was to ensure the region functioned at a high-level of operational excellence that supported effective teaching and learning. In her role, she led KSL's work around school-based operations, facilities management, real estate endeavors, data & compliance requirements, human resources supports and technology needs.

Prior to joining KIPP, Norie was a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group focused primarily on change management and organizational design efforts in a variety of industries. Additionally, she has worked in several capacities with a variety of education reform-minded organizations including New Leaders, the Wallace Foundation, the Tennessee Department of Education and the Achievement School District.

Norie holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, an M.Ed. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in sociology with economics from Yale University.

Jeremy Smith currently serves as the executive director and co-president of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. Smith joined the Rainwater Charitable Foundation in April of 2009 and assumed the role of executive director in 2011. He directs the foundation’s giving in the areas of K-12 education, medical research and education-related gifts in India and East Africa.

Prior to joining the Rainwater team, Smith worked in management consulting for four years, first with McKinsey & Company, serving clients in consumer packaged goods, technology and healthcare; and later as an sssociate director with DenuoSource LLC, primarily in marketing and organizational design.  Prior to McKinsey, he worked in operations research at Merck & Co., where he managed global operations improvement projects in both Latin America and Asia.

Fluent in Spanish and proficient in Chinese, Smith is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Divinity School. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Arkansas with a BS in engineering. During college, he spent one year teaching in an elementary classroom and received a District Outstanding Teacher of the Year award. Smith also currently serves as a board member at Reading Partners, Teach for America DFW Board of Advisors, and the Commit Partnership.