Strategic Data Project Convening 2025

Circe Stumbo is president of West Wind Education Policy Inc. (West Wind), which she founded in January 2001. West Wind works across the country to build the capacity of leaders to imagine and enact public K-12 education systems that engage each and every child in learning.

Under Circe’s direction, West Wind has worked on standards-based systemic reform, equity, personalized learning, and research, design, and development in education, all of which are based on a vision of equitable experiences and outcomes for all.

Over the course of more than thirty years, Circe has facilitated national and statewide blue-ribbon panels and summits, cross-functional working teams, organizational strategic planning processes, and equity leadership teams. This includes her recent facilitation of Iowa’s statewide Dyslexia Task Force and prior to that, their Assessment Task Force. Circe has worked with fifty-seven states and territories through her collaborations with national and regional advocacy organizations and federal centers. She also has consulted directly with state agencies in American Samoa, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, and local educational agencies in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.

For nearly fifteen years prior to founding West Wind, Circe worked in non-profit associations in the fields of agriculture, higher education, and K–12 education policy in Washington, DC. Circe also taught political theory at the University of Maryland College Park, where she advanced to Ph.D. candidacy in 2001 before investing her efforts in West Wind and her commitment to alleviate inequities in public education.

Circe earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University, a master’s in government and politics from the University of Maryland, and a bachelor’s in political science from The University of Iowa.