Cassie Perham joined the Chamberlin Education Foundation as Senior Program Officer six months ago, partnering with grantees and leading the foundation’s Talent Pipelines and Informed Community Leadership strategies.
Perham came to Chamberlin after co-founding and leading the Oakland Literacy Coalition. She has sat on both sides of the grantmaking table: as a nonprofit leader and fundraiser, and as a program officer at another place-based family foundation. That perspective shapes her approach.
In this conversation, Perham talks about what she has heard in West Contra Costa, the lessons she carries from Oakland, and how she defines success.
1. What first drew you to education and community-centered work? Was there a particular experience or person that shaped that path for you?
My path to this work began with my great Aunt Bibi, who was like a grandmother to me growing up. As a lifelong activist and educator, she passed down core values and lessons that shape who I am. She and her family came to the US as Jewish refugees during World War II. After the war, she worked on the Nuremberg trials and served as a member of the United Nations committee that drafted the Genocide Convention, then had a decades-long career as a teacher and reading specialist.
I learned from her that it’s up to each of us to work towards justice. That building true community means listening and honoring our differences, while recognizing our struggles are interconnected and futures are interdependent. And that the work of public education is, at its core, social and racial justice work and one of the most powerful pathways we have towards expanding opportunity and equity.
2. In the six months since you joined the Chamberlin Education Foundation, what have you heard from families, educators, and community partners in West Contra Costa?
I’ve heard a lot of love and pride alongside pain and urgency for change. There’s a deep care for students, belief in their potential, and desire to see them succeed. And there are real challenges. I started the same week as the first teacher strike in the district’s history. The message I heard from teachers was: I love my students, I love my job, but it’s untenable to live and raise a family in the Bay Area and I don’t have access to all of the supports I need to help my students succeed.
Then came the budget cuts. Families and teachers spoke with clarity about what was important to them. But at the end of the day, there are finite resources requiring difficult decisions. I have also been in spaces where people are coming together to face hard realities head-on, including academic outcomes that are unacceptably low and inequitable, and to share ideas and bright spots where progress can be replicated.
3. What are you proudest of from your time leading the Oakland Literacy Coalition, and what lessons are you bringing with you?
I’m proud that we helped elevate literacy as a shared citywide priority in Oakland. When we launched our grade-level reading campaign in 2012 with the school district and mayor’s office, there was no public discussion about the fact that a majority of students were not learning to read. There was a crisis impacting thousands of students but no vision or coordinated plan to improve things.
By creating space to come together and look at data, we built awareness and a collective understanding that the status quo was unacceptable and that the problem lay in our systems and approach, not our students, families, or educators. From there, we worked to advocate and support the adoption of evidence-based practices and expand opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.
A lesson for me is to be uncompromising in the goal for all students to succeed and the urgency for change, while recognizing there’s no single solution. Progress comes from many directions and demands commitment to the long haul. It requires all of us to have the courage to confront painful realities, dedication to rigor and learning, and a willingness to do better as we know better.
4. What is your vision for the Talent Pipelines and Informed Community Leadership strategies at Chamberlin?
On talent: research shows teachers are the single most important school-based driver of student outcomes. Having highly skilled and diverse teachers improves outcomes for all students, especially when teachers share students’ backgrounds. Strong principals have an amplifying effect. Our goal is to support the conditions and partnerships that enable schools to attract, develop, and retain excellent educators.
On community leadership: we know that achieving excellent and equitable outcomes for all West Contra Costa students will require collaboration and aligned support across the education ecosystem. It’s critical that we have spaces for all parties to have the data to understand problems, know what solutions have evidence of working, and determine the path forward together. Families and communities need a seat at the table so that hard trade-offs and tough decisions are informed and led by those most directly impacted.
5. What does success look like to you?
Ultimately, success is when our students succeed. When all students are achieving at high levels and graduating with the skills, confidence, and opportunity to pursue their dreams and fulfill their potential.
That is always the north star. To get there, we need the capacity to make progress together as a community. You never fully “solve” an ongoing project like public education. There will always be new challenges. In this context, success also looks like getting better at naming what we collectively care about, learning from each other, and working through hard problems with everyone affected having a real say.
6. Your background includes both fundraising as a nonprofit leader and making grants as a program officer. How does that “both sides of the table” experience shape how you approach your role now?
Having sat on both sides of the fundraising table, I know that nonprofits and philanthropy are most successful when they move in an authentic partnership with transparency and accountability to each other and our shared goals.
A recent survey from the Center for Effective Philanthropy found that among nonprofits, burnout in executive directors and fundraising difficulties have dramatically increased. I felt that as a nonprofit leader. Now as a funder, I recognize that reality and think about how I can share in that burden.
That means thinking creatively about not just how we allocate funds, but how we share access to networks, information, and other resources. As a place-based funder, it also means showing up and building relationships, listening deeply, and co-designing solutions that are responsive to the assets, challenges, and opportunities in our community.
7. When you visit schools or community spaces, what moments give you the most hope?
It’s moments of growth. Whether it’s a concept that finally clicks for a student, or seeing a teacher or school leader grapple with something that isn’t working, learn from it, and figure out a different approach. That takes persistence, humility, and courage.
Everybody in schools and education work, from kids to adults, is required to be a constant learner. We instinctively expect this of students, but we don’t always think of adults in the same way. Lasting change happens when all of us in the education ecosystem are willing to keep learning. To question our assumptions, refuse to accept the status quo, continually improve how we serve students, and push ourselves and each other to do better. Whether we’re in classrooms, school leadership, community organizations, higher education, or philanthropy, our willingness to grow shapes what’s possible for young people. That’s what gives me hope.
