Michael Strong is one of the most experienced creators of small, innovative, high performance schools in the world. His projects include Moreno Valley High School, which was ranked the 36th best public high school in the U.S.; KoSchool, a lab school based on entrepreneurship and intellectual development; Winston Academy, a school at which middle school students passed Advanced Placement courses; and middle school programs for HeadsUp!, a multi-campus Montessori organization.

One of Michael’s innovations at his schools is Socratic Practice, a form of text-based intellectual dialogue designed to increase SAT verbal scores and increase intellectual sophistication. He is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and has consulted for hundreds of schools and universities across world. Michael’s work as an educational entrepreneur led to a partnership with John Mackey, the founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market. John and Michael co-founded a non-profit, Freedom Lights Our World (FLOW, Inc.), dedicated to promoting entrepreneurial solutions to world problems. FLOW gave birth to Conscious Capitalism, Peace through Commerce, Radical Social Entrepreneurs, and the Startup Cities Institute. Michael is the lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalism Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

Michael joined Higher Ground Education (HGE) in 2017 to launch its first vanguard high school, the Academy of Thought and Industry, in San Francisco. HGE is the leading organization scaling and modernizing Montessori education with dozens of campuses across the U.S. ATI is the high school model for the HGE Montessori network. There are now four ATI high schools, San Francisco, Austin, New York City, and St. Louis.