ERS Team

Partner

Email Ventura

Dr. Ventura Rodriguez joined ERS as a partner in September 2021. He brings over 25 years of experience as a teacher, principal, and state-level administrator. At ERS, Ventura’s initial projects include working with the Metro Nashville Public Schools to align their resources to a multi-year strategy in service of long-term redesign. He is also supporting work in the Dallas Independent School District related to resource equity and supporting ESSER district cohorts in Indiana and Tennessee.

Prior to joining ERS, Ventura served as Senior Associate Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), where he led efforts to diversify the state’s educator workforce and designed strategies to advance educational equity for Massachusetts students. He also led the Department’s Statewide System of Support, providing support and assistance to the state’s lowest performing schools and districts. Ventura spent the first ten years of his career as a high school Spanish and humanities teacher in San Francisco and Nairobi, Kenya. In 2007, he founded St. HOPE Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Harlem, where he served as executive director and principal. Ventura currently serves as Board chairman for the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System (MTRS), which provides retirement, disability, and survivor benefits to more than 154,000 active and retired teachers, administrators, and their families.

Outside of work, Ventura can be found on soccer fields and in dance studios throughout New England cheering on his three kids. He loves to cook, travel, and go on hikes throughout New England.