Ari Gerzon-Kessler

Family Partnerships Coordinator
Boulder Valley School District

Ari Gerzon-Kessler leads the Family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado. He is also an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships.

Ari has been an educator since 2000, having served as a principal and bilingual teacher. His educational experiences have allowed him to work in a variety of low- and high-performing schools, and affluent and predominantly-low-income schools. Ari is a certified Integral Facilitator and leads trainings at the intersection of family partnerships, social-emotional learning (SEL), and cultural responsiveness.

In 2006, Ari was a recipient of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Fund. As principal, his school received the Governor’s Distinguished Improvement Award in 2013. His leadership efforts to strengthen partnerships with underrepresented families and dismantle unjust practices was featured in Education Week in 2015. Ari regularly presents at national and international conferences on Families and Educators Together (FET) teams and other innovative family partnership best practices.

Ari is author of On The Same Team: Bringing Educators & Underrepresented Families Together (Solution Tree, 2024), as well as Money Fit: Six Steps to Financial Well Being (Amazon, 2019). He co-authored Have No Career Fear (Natavi Guides, 2005) and was a contributing writer to The Five Dimensions of Engaged Teaching (Solution Tree, 2013). His writings have been featured in a variety of educational publications, including Educational Leadership and Principal Magazine.

Ari received a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in instruction and curriculum from the University of Colorado.