Will Pinkston Email & Phone Number

Will Pinkston is a public-affairs professional with more than 25 years of experience in business, government, and journalism. Will primarily consults with organizations in the education, healthcare, and legal fields. As a top aide to a former governor, Will led a successful campaign to raise Tennessee's K-12 academic standards, which resulted in the Volunteer State becoming the fastest-improving state in the history of the Nation’s Report Card. Harvard University’s journal Education Next dubbed it “The Tennessee Miracle.” Additionally, Will spearheaded campaigns to raise teacher pay, modernize the state's education funding formula, and expand a pre-kindergarten pilot program to nearly 1,000 classrooms statewide. Will helped overhaul the state’s higher-education funding formula to incentivize college completion and helped launch the Tennessee Lottery, which has funded nearly $7 billion in college scholarships and other educational programs.After working in state government, Will served as an elected member of his hometown Metro Nashville Board of Public Education, helping oversee one of the nation's largest urban public school districts. In that role, Will led initiatives to close academic achievement gaps, support English learners, and clamp down on corruption in taxpayer-funded privately run charter schools. Working with allies statewide, Will organized a coalition of public-education advocates that resulted in dozens of Tennessee school districts filing landmark litigation to address the inadequate state funding of public schools. The legal and advocacy effort generated more than $1 billion in new investment in a state that historically ranks near the bottom of American public-education funding.Earlier in his career, Will worked as a reporter for the Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.), the Tennessean (Nashville, Tenn.), and the Wall Street Journal. At the Journal, Will participated in team coverage of the 2000 presidential recount and contributed to the historic September 12, 2001, edition, which earned the newspaper’s staff the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

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  University Of Tennessee, Knoxville

  Communications