A native Austinite, John Armbrust is the founder and CEO of Austin Achieve Public Schools. First finding his passion for education through Teach For America (Metro Atlanta ‘04), John has served in a variety of capacities at traditional ISD and public charter schools across the country.

Fueled by the jarring educational inequities in Northeast Austin, John set out to open a high-quality neighborhood school to ensure that all scholars–regardless of zip code–had access to a college-ready education. Beginning with 104 6th-grade scholars in a local church in 2012, Austin Achieve has grown to serve more than 2,700 Pre-K through 12th-grade scholars across three state-of-the-art campuses, and will grow to serve more than 7,000 scholars by 2029.

John is a champion for education and uses his deep understanding of the system to support other schools and organizations to advocate for reform. He presently serves on the board for CharterFolk and the Texas Public Charter School Association and previously served as President for Teach For America Austin Alumni. He is also the founder of Crossbow Educational Consulting, which supports districts and states to implement data-driven-based teacher evaluation processes.

He also holds a Bachelor of Science and Engineering from Duke University and also received the Beyond Duke Award for exemplary leadership and sustained record of service to the community.

Outside of school, John is an avid traveler and queso connoisseur. To balance out his love of Tex Mex, he is a competitive runner and triathlete, completing the Boston Marathon multiple times, all of the World Major marathons as well as over 100 marathons including one on each of the seven continents.