Gerard Robinson

About

Gerard Robinson is a professor of practice in public policy and law at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the School of Law at the University of Virginia. His areas of expertise are K-12 and higher education, criminal justice reform, race in American institutions, and the role of nonprofit organizations in civil society.

Examples of his scholarship include a chapter in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (2025), an essay in the University of Virginia Law Review (2023) and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Law & Social Change (2022), two co-edited books, and more than 100 editorials. He has been published or quoted in CNN Opinion, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Hill, The New York Times, The Daily Progress, The Virginian-Pilot, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report.

Between 2023-2025, Robinson traveled with a delegation from the United States to meet prison leaders, elected officials, educators, nonprofit executives, and employers involved in criminal justice reform in Brazil, Germany, Kenya, and Norway. His work in education and policy studies also includes travel to China, Dominican Republic, Egypt, England, Gambia, Haiti, Israel, Scotland, Senegal, and Switzerland. Between 2020-2023, he co-hosted the popular Learning Curve Podcast that included interviews with scholars, executives, elected officials, academics, and 13 winners of the Pulitzer Prize.

From 2017 to 2020, Robinson was Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity (CAO), a Washington, D.C.-based research and education initiative created by a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation, and Koch Industries. In that role, he oversaw an $11 million investment into evidence-based solutions to the most pressing education, entrepreneurship, and criminal justice issues throughout the United States by working with faculty and students at HBCUs and other postsecondary institutions.

From 2011 to 2012, Robinson served as Commissioner of Education for Florida. Prior to that, he served as Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia. In addition to supporting the education initiatives of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, he provided guidance to 16 public universities, the community college system, five higher education and research centers, the Department of Education, and state-supported museums.

Between 2005 and 2010, Robinson was a program director and later the president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, which was a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that supported federal and state parental choice policies empowering low-income and working-class black families.