Our Board
Paul Morrissey
Founder & CEO
Paul Morrissey is the network’s CEO and leads the Executive Team. He founded Compass Rose in 2017 with one grade level on one campus, 90 students, and a staff of ten. Over five years, he has grown the organization to serve nearly 3,000 students in grades K-12 on six campuses across Central Texas, with a staff of over 300 game-changing educators. Prior to founding Compass Rose, Paul completed the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship, worked in a turnaround district in Massachusetts, and managed expansion efforts for a charter network in Arizona.
Paul was a 2021 San Antonio Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree for his work at Compass Rose and across the San Antonio community. He earned a Bachelor’s in English from the University of Connecticut and a Master’s in Literature from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Don Barfield
Board Member
Don Barfield is an Associate Director of Westat, and prior to this role was the President and Founding Partner at Edvance Research. With more than 35 years of executive leadership in public, non-profit, and for-profit educational organizations, his guidance has resulted in the successful delivery of major research and development initiatives locally and nationally.
He has given expert testimony to Boards of Education at the state and local levels, Congressional testimony, participated on state assessment and accountability technical advisory panels, the U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon schools panel, a National Research Council committee, and numerous Boards of Directors. Mr. Barfield has worked in school desegregation for over 30 years and has participated as an expert to the Federal District Court in many cases
Kayleigh Colombero
Board Member
Kayleigh Colombero is the Superintendent of Étoile Academy Charter School. She was part of the 2016 Building Excellent Schools Fellowship, a rigorous, yearlong, comprehensive training program in urban charter school creation and leadership.
Growing up in a financially unstable home, Kayleigh experienced many personal challenges on her path to college. Luckily, Kayleigh had a few mentors that pushed her to succeed in the face of much adversity. She set her sights on Smith College, an elite private college, which she eventually attended on a scholarship.
Kayleigh has eight years of experience in education as a middle school and high school teacher, an instructional coach, a department chair, a team leader, and as the executive director of a youth-development nonprofit.
Krystal Grimes
Board Member
Claudia Hernandez
Chairperson
Claudia Hernandez is an attorney at De Mott, McChesney, Curtright & Armendariz, LLP practicing immigration and civil law. Claudia is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received her Doctor of Jurisprudence from Baylor Law School. She was a fellow at the Latino Center for Leadership Development Academy (LCLD) and is an alumna of the Latina Leadership Institute (LLI).
Being a first-generation American and the first in her family to graduate high school, Claudia knows firsthand how education can transform one’s life. Because of that, she has involved herself in advocating for education access. She has provided testimony to the Texas Senate Education Committee and is currently a part of the leadership committee for the GED Endowment and Scholarship Program which seeks scholarships to cover GED courses and exams for low income students.
Arturo Herrera Jr.
Secretary
Arturo Herrera, Jr., is the Manager of Strategic Planning at VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority where he oversees the department responsible for long-range and capital planning. His professional work experience is concentrated in multimodal transportation planning and capital project development & management. While in college, he worked for various educational programs such as the Pre-Freshman Engineering Program (PREP) and federally-funded TRIO Programs, where he saw first hand the benefits educational enrichment can have on at-risk and first generation college students.
Mr. Herrera may bring to the Board an expertise in facility planning, strategic planning, and transportation planning, but with it comes his passion for providing opportunities through education.
Kurtis Indorf
Vice Chairperson
Kurtis Indorf currently serves as the Founder and Managing Partner of Build the Future, LLC and as Executive Director of Instruction with Great Hearts Texas where he launched and leads a new strategy and team to support strong instruction and achievement across Great Hearts’ growing school network in Texas.
Previously, Kurtis served as the founding Deputy Chief of Academics, San Antonio with KIPP Texas. Before joining the KIPP family, Kurtis was the founding Executive Director of The Achievement Network in Colorado building partnerships with district and charter systems across the state to develop leaders’ skill and practice in data-driven teaching and learning. While there, he served as a gubernatorial appointee to the Charter School Institute’s board of directors, an independent state agency and the only state-wide charter authorizer in Colorado.
Saamra Mekuria-Grillo
Board Member
Saamra Mekuria-Grillo is the founder of Formation Ventures, a startup dedicated to increasing the number and success of Black entrepreneurs starting in high school, through educational and new venture support programs. Prior to founding Formation Ventures, she was the Chief Operating Officer at the Pahara Institute, where she oversaw Program and Institute Operations. Before that, Saamra was a consultant at Bain & Company, where she worked with clients in education, private equity, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.
Saamra started her career at Google in India as one of the founding team members of Google’s Hyderabad office, where she focused on training and growth of Google’s customer service sales and operations team. Holding a deep belief in the power of education to provide transformative opportunities to young people, Saamra has served on multiple charter school boards.
Tino Morenz
Board Member
Tino Morenz, Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft, has worked in software engineering for over a decade, both in Ireland and in the US, where he has helped localize Office programs into over 100 languages, built tools to protect customer privacy, and currently works on detecting and mitigating cyberattacks as part of Microsoft’s Cloud Security team.
As a German native who earned his undergraduate degree in Process Informatics from the Berufsakademie Glauchau in Germany and his MSc in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing from the University of Dublin, Trinity College in Ireland, Tino brings a unique perspective forged by experience in two distinct educational systems and in two different languages. He is currently navigating the waters of raising a bilingual child in the American school system, providing another layer to his engagement with diverse educational establishments.
Christian Reed-Ogba
Board Member
Christian is the CEO of EHCU Public Relations and has been an entrepreneur for almost 20 years – launching her boutique public relations service in Detroit. Upon relocating to San Antonio, Christian met and married Uchennaya Ogba. They became business partners before their honeymoon. Christian has worked to expand conversations around city development, urbanism, entrepreneurship, and transit.
Mitchell Walker
Treasurer
Mitchell Walker received a B.S. in accounting and finance from Trinity University, where he was also a member of the men’s basketball team. Mitchell currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Jefferson Bank in San Antonio, where he has worked to provide facilities and working capital financing to charter schools in San Antonio.
He previously dedicated time as a board member for Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Texas and KIPP San Antonio’s finance committee, and currently serves as the Vice Chair for the Grand Canyon Conservancy.