Amy Rosen

Senior Advisor, The HOW Institute for Society
Former President and CEO, NFTE
Former Chair, Amtrak

From the early days of The How Institute, Amy has worked closely with Founder and Chairman Dov Seidman. As Managing Director, she helped launch and grow the organization.  With an unwavering commitment to the fierce urgency of HOW, Amy continues to partner with Dov and currently serves as the Institute’s Senior Advisor.

Amy is a proven results-driven leader who has extensive experience managing organizations through transformational change. Leading both public and private enterprises, she has built a successful track record developing and executing ambitious growth plans. Comfortable in public leadership roles, she has served as a presidential appointee for three U.S. Presidents and served as an adviser to several global business leaders.

Amy spent nearly two decades in the transportation sector, gaining a reputation as an entrepreneurial leader of urban transit systems and an advocate for national investment in transportation infrastructure. She served on and led several high-profile public Boards including Amtrak and NJ Transit. She is credited with playing leadership roles in both creating the first statewide transit agency (NJT) as well as overseeing the introduction of ACELA, the first high speed rail service in the country. She has received extensive public recognition of her work including being honored by national advocacy groups, APTA, NJT Hall of fame, and numerous labor organizations.

Amy is an expert and impactful leader on the global challenges facing youth education and employment, she has led and advised on several K-12 education reform initiatives including those in New York and Newark.  She has advised City Chancellors, State Commissioners US Secretaries of Education and spent 7 years running NFTE, a highly impactful global NGO teaching nearly a million young people from economically challenged circumstances how to create their own business.

On behalf of the World Economic Forum Amy led a policy initiative on youth Unemployment and co-led an Advisory Council on behalf of President Obama tasked with developing strategies for young Americans to become financially capable. In addition to leading and advising organizations involved in this work, she has written, taught and is a frequently speaker on these issues.  Recently she has worked as an advisor to several startup Education CEOs and is authoring a book on the Future of Work.

Amy has been a contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines and has been a frequent guest on CNBC and Bloomberg News.

“The best interest of children should trump all and demands that leaders in Education pause regularly and consider how to do just that while balancing all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.”

Learn more about Amy here and read about her appointment by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy.