Dr. Brian G. Osborne

Dr. Brian Osborne, a well-known educational leader in the tri-state area, joined Lehigh's Educational Leadership program as a visiting professor in May 2019.

Dr. Osborne most recently served as the Superintendent of the City School District of New Rochelle from 2014-2018.  He worked in partnership with the Board of Education and leaders across the district to design a Strategic Roadmap for this diverse district of 10 schools and 11,000 students that was adopted by the Board of Education.

Dr. Osborne has devoted more than 25 years to education as a teacher and administrator, including key positions in the New York City Department of Education, the nation’s largest school system.

Dr. Osborne also led the South Orange-Maplewood School District in Maplewood, New Jersey for over seven years. In that district, which also boasts a diverse population, he significantly improved student outcomes while narrowing the achievement gap on state assessments. He created an environment that encouraged more students to take higher-level courses and saw more graduates continue on to college. His top priority there was to restructure the budget to devote more resources directly to classroom instruction and learning.

Fluent in Spanish, Dr. Osborne began his career in 1991 as a bilingual Spanish teacher in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Four years later, he co-founded a public school in the Bronx, the New School for Arts and Sciences.

His leadership skills were honed in administrative positions in the Plainfield, New Jersey schools and later in the New York City public school system, which serves 1.1 million students in more than 1,800 schools. In New York, he served as Chief of Staff, Teaching and Learning and as Director of Instructional Technology. While there, he spearheaded a program that provided a laptop computer to every student in 20 middle schools – more than 1,500 classrooms.

Dr. Osborne holds a doctorate and master's degree in administration, planning and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a master's degree in mathematics education from New York University. He and his wife, Karen, live in Weehawken, New Jersey, where they are raising two daughters.