State Executives

Jerri Fatticci joined Citizen Schools in 2006. Prior to Citizen Schools, Jerri had a successful career in the financial services sector. She served as a financial advisor at Bank of America, working closely with clients to develop financial plans and portfolio strategies to meet their long-term goals. While at Bank of America, Jerri served as a chairperson for the Women’s Impact Fund, and served on the Citizen Schools Council of Champions. She is also a Community Advisory Board Member for Junior League. Jerri has a B.S. in Business Administration with a minor in Economics from Campbell University.

Suzanne Goodwin joined Citizen Schools as Executive Director of New Mexico in 2007, with twenty five years of experience as a teacher and administrator within the Australian government education sector. In 2001, she was nominated for participation in the Eleanor Davis Mentorship Program for Outstanding Women in Leadership. In 2003, her innovative work in challenged educational communities was acknowledged by the award of a national Sir Winston Churchill Fellowship in Education, which took her to the United States to explore exemplary practices in this field. In the same year, Suzanne was the state runner up for 'Outstanding educational Leadership' by the state education department. In 2006, Suzanne commenced work as a consultant for the Center for RelationaLearning based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Suzanne is the current Chair of the Global Community Learning Network Committee of the National Community Education Association (USA). Suzanne graduated from Deakin University (Australia) with a Bachelors Degree in Education and is completing a Masters Degree in Educational research by thesis from the Monash University (Australia).

Patrick Kirby joined Citizen Schools as Massachusetts State Executive Director in 2007, with over a decade of management experience in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. He is currently Executive Director for Massachusetts. Before joining Citizen Schools, Patrick spent five years managing Timberland's global volunteer programs as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility department. Over his five years, employee engagement increased globally by more than 800 percent. Prior to Timberland, Patrick briefly taught high school before spending five years at City Year, where he held a number of senior leadership roles at their founding Boston site and their national office. Patrick is a graduate of McGill University, where he received his BA in Political Science in 1995. He has served on the Board of Directors of GroundWork USA, The Brookings Institute's Building Bridges Task Force on International Volunteering and Service, and Volunteer NH!

Todd Litton joined Citizen Schools as Executive Director of Texas in 2009. In this capacity, he leads the development of the Citizen Schools network in Austin and Houston, and also cultivates the growth of Citizen Schools across the state. Prior to Citizen Schools, Todd was a vice president and Wealth Advisor for UBS Financial Services for almost five years, where he worked with clients to help them grow, preserve and distribute their assets. Prior to UBS, Todd directed Preschool for ALL, a joint early childhood-business effort to expand access to high quality preschool in Houston and in Texas. The Children’s Defense Fund recognized him as an Emerging Leader for his work there. Todd has played an active role in the Houston and Texas community for many years, including board leadership on The Immunization Partnership, the Education Foundation of Harris County, Small Steps Nurturing Center and the Texas Lyceum Association. Todd earned an A.B. in English from Duke University, a J.D. from The University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

Nitzan Pelman opened the New York region of Citizen Schools in September of 2007 and serves as its founding Executive Director. In her role as ED, she oversees a state office comprised of 50 staff members who in turn work with 600 students in 5 public schools in 3 boroughs. She is also responsible for raising 2.4 million dollars in FY11. Citizen Schools was founded in 1995 to bring new solutions the education reform landscape and seeks to reimage the school day.

Prior to joining Citizen Schools, she worked at the New York City Department of Education for four years in the Klein/Bloomberg administration. In that time, she served as the Assistant Director of the Office of New Teacher Induction and helped create a mentoring program for 6,500 new teachers. In her final year at the DOE, she developed, designed, and implemented the citywide "learning environment survey" administered to 1.8 million people through the Office of Accountability. She also served as the first Development Director for Teach For America New York where she organized its first New York City benefit.

Nitzan has participated in CORO's Leadership New York program and served in special project capacities at KIPP and at New Leaders for New Schools. She is a graduate of New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Stern College for Women.

Joe Ross joined Citizen Schools as Executive Director of California in 2010. Prior to joining Citizen Schools, Ross worked at Cisco Systems where he led corporate strategy and operations in Mexico for the Linksys and Flip Video brands. During his eight-year military career, Joe Ross served as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for the fleet component of the U.S. Southern Command and was responsible for leading security cooperation programs in Latin America. A Truman Scholar and a fellow of the Truman National Security Project, Ross holds a BA from Yale and a JD from Stanford Law School, where he was 59th President of the Stanford Law Review. Joe is also the parent of three children, ages 14, 9 and 7.

Bing Howell joined Citizen Schools in 2009 as the Director of Civic Engagement and Development. In this role Bing developed strategic outreach efforts to engage and manage volunteers, building partnerships to increase the region’s volunteer pipeline and revenue base.

Prior to joining Citizen Schools, Bing was a Business Development Associate at Bryanston Square Consulting in London, a Program Manager at CIMBA Undergraduate near Venice and a Senior Specialist at Merrill Lynch in New York. He holds a triple bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems, Logistics and International Business from Iowa State University (minor in French and Spanish) and an MBA from the University of Kansas. Bing is a Six Sigma Green Belt and is a certified trainer in Kepner-Tregoe process management.