Donald Kamentz
Founder & CEO, Contigo Ed, Houston, Texas
Overview
Contigo Ed believes all students, regardless of their backgrounds and the schools they attend, should be advised by highly-trained, skilled, and effective educators helping them thrive and reach their fullest potential. Thus, what if every counselor in the U.S. were readily given the tools and resources to dramatically improve the number of career-ready and/or college graduates? What would be different for them and most importantly, their students who are empowered with the essential knowledge to make their most informed postsecondary choices? The rippling effect of this mass wave of college and career readiness would be game-changing for our society and economy!
Taking our many collective years of diverse experiences and lessons learned, we plan to create a first-in-kind, fully digital, comprehensive, and intentionally-tiered Postsecondary Pathways online training and accompanying aligned, topical high school curriculum that will allow educators to have the essential knowledge and resources to support their students and families, regardless of their school setting and/or their years of experience.
Bio
As the Founder and CEO of the Contigo Ed, Donald Kamentz brings his over 25+ years of diverse experiences and passion of working in the postsecondary access and success arenas to help ensure all students, regardless of their backgrounds and the schools they attend, are advised by highly-trained, skilled, and effective educators committed to helping them thrive and reach their fullest potential.
Donald was first exposed to this critical work as an undergraduate student who worked in his college’s undergraduate admissions office and then broadened his college access work as the first-ever Director of College Counseling and Alumni Programs for a brand-new public charter school called YES College Preparatory School in Houston, Texas. At YES Prep, as the first-ever Managing Director of College Initiatives, he spent over 16 years building a nationally recognized comprehensive college counseling and alumni support program before leaving to become the Executive Director of Character Lab, a non-profit education organization dedicated to advancing both the science and practice of character development.
Donald has been a member of both the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and the Texas Association for College Admission Counseling (TACAC) since 1999. For TACAC, he served as a Secondary School Delegate to NACAC’s National Assembly, as well as lead faculty chair for seven years of the College Counseling track of TACAC/College Board’s Summer Institute — a training program designed to assist and fully train new college counselors with all aspects of the college admissions process. Donald was also elected to serve for a three-year term of state President for TACAC, the first charter school representative to do so in the history of the state organization.
Over his last 25+ years in the education sector, Donald has impacted every position and program he has been fortunate to be a part of, most notably in creating a nationally recognized college counseling program and running a start-up, non-profit education organization. Due to his varied work experiences and success, Donald is a frequent speaker on local, statewide, and national panels on the college access and success processes, in particular for first-generation, college-bound students, while actively serving on several admissions’ advisory councils throughout the country.
Donald earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science, with a minor in international affairs-Latin American Studies, from The George Washington University. Donald is a Cambiar Education Fellow, a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.