JR Tomkinson is a seasoned operations executive with leadership experience spanning the K12 public, private and nonprofit sectors. He most recently served as Managing Director for City Year Chicago, where he led service implementation for the largest of City Year’s 29 regions. Under his leadership, City Year Chicago deployed 265 AmeriCorps members to serve as near-peer mentors to students in 32 Chicago Public Schools partnerships at the height of the pandemic, driving significant gains in the rate of students on-track to graduate at City Year’s partner schools from SY19 to SY21 even as the district’s overall average on-track rate declined.
Among other previous experiences, JR led the development and launch of a $6 million shared services center at the Chicago Public Schools district, an initiative that encompassed the restructuring of the district’s non-instructional departments into a new multisite, cross-functional unit that would substantially improve the quality of principal support by the district’s central office, leading all CPS departments in principal satisfaction ratings in its inaugural year.
JR earned his bachelor’s’ degree from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
