Dr. Cory Heyman
Dr. Cory Heyman is the former Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director, Room to Read Accelerator, at Room to Read, an organization that believes World Change Starts with Educated Children.® Room to Read envisions a world in which all children can pursue a quality education that enables them to reach their full potential and contribute to their communities and the world.
Cory supported Room to Read’s external technical assistance projects, and visioning for the longer-term programmatic growth and strategic positioning of the organization as a whole. Previously Cory served as Room to Read’s Chief Program Officer and has acted as a close advisor to Room to Read since 2004, including serving as a member of Room to Read’s Global Advisory Board from 2008 to 2010.
In representing Room to Read, Cory has served as a facilitator for the Clinton Global Initiative’s sub-group on Girls’ Secondary Education and as a member of La Pietra Coalition’s Working Group on Education and Training. Prior to joining Room to Read, Cory served as vice president and deputy director of the Academy for Educational Development’s Center for Gender Equity, where he supported program development, applied research, and program evaluation. He oversaw a variety of projects in the Center’s portfolio, including the USAID Ambassadors Girls Scholarship Program, the UNICEF Gender Strengthening Initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean, the UNICEF Global Consultation on Follow-up to the Evaluation of Gender Policy Implementation, and the UNICEF/Middle East North Africa Gender and Education Indicators project. He also served as Chair of AED’s Institutional Review Board.
Working at the nexus of public, private, and non-profit sectors, Cory has managed large-scale educational projects in the United States, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and southern Africa for more than 25 years. He has served as a professional staff member in the United States Senate; Executive Director of the Potomac Regional Education Partnership; Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research; and President of Surya Associates International, an educational consulting firm. As a specialist in applied quantitative and qualitative research methods, Cory’s research and project work has focused on strategies to increase access to quality educational opportunities for underserved children in low-income countries.
Cory is the co-author of Scaling Global Change: A Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving the Start-up Phase and Driving Impact, alongside Erin Ganju. A “how to” guide for social entrepreneurs who have a vision of changing the world, the book details the process of building an effective and scalable social enterprise. He has been a speaker at the Skoll Foundation for Entrepreneurship, World Bank, Brookings Institution, U.S. Peace Corps, U.S. Agency for International Development, the White House, and the British House of Commons. Cory received a B.A. and M.A. degrees in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, and has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University.