ESRF Board Bios

ESRF’s Board of Directors is as follows:

Abbreviated biographies of the Program Administrator and ESRF directors are as follows:

Buddy D. Philpot. Mr. Philpot serves as President of the Board of Directors of the ProgramAdministrator and as President of the Board of Directors of ESRF. Mr. Philpot is Senior Family Advisor on the Walton Enterprises team, where he transitioned to in 2016 after almost 16 years as Executive Director of the Walton Family Foundation. He joined WFF in 2001 after working for over 20 years in commercial banking, the last 13 years with the Arvest Bank Group where he was on the founding team and served as President of Arvest Bank Springdale. He continues to serve the bank as a member of the Advisory Board of Directors. Mr. Philpot has a BSBA in Finance and Banking from the University of Arkansas and a Graduate Degree in Banking from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking at Southern Methodist University. Mr. Philpot has been active in national and community non-profit leadership currently serving as a Director of the Building Charters Fund, a Director of Heartland Forward, a Director of the Arvest Opportunity Fund, a member of the Northwest Arkansas Council and on the Finance Council at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Mr. Philpot has been active in many other Northwest Arkansas organizations, including being a founding Board Member of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Camp War Eagle, Excellerate Foundation, and The Jones Center for Families.

Kevin Hall. Mr. Hall serves as Treasurer of the Board of Directors of the Program Administrator and as a member of the Board of Directors of ESRF. Mr. Hall is the CEO of the Charter School Growth Fund (“CSGF”) – a non-profit organization that identifies the nation’s best charter schools, funds their expansion, and helps increase their impact. CSGF’s “portfolio” of school networks includes nearly 1,500 public charter schools that serve over 725,000 students. Before joining CSGF in 2009, Mr. Hall was Chief Operating Officer of the Broad Foundation (“TBF”), where he led various aspects of TBF’s grant investment strategy. Prior to joining the Broad Foundation, he co founded and led business development for Chancellor Beacon Academies, a manager of charter and private schools across the United States. Previously, he also ran a division of infoUSA and worked at McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., and Teach for America. Mr. Hall taught elementary school in central Los Angeles. He earned his Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College.

Scott Pearson. Mr. Pearson serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Program Administrator. Mr. Pearson served from 2012 to 2020 as Executive Director of the DC Public Charter School Board (“DCPCSB”). Mr. Pearson implemented significant reforms in how the Board approves and oversees charter schools, making it a national model for charter school authorizing. Previously, Mr. Pearson served in the Obama Administration as the Deputy of the Office of Innovation and Improvement for the U.S. Department of Education. He also co-founded Leadership Public Schools, a network of college- preparatory public charter high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the former Board Chair of NACSA and serves as a director of the Building Charters Fund. Mr. Pearson is the former Vice President for Corporate Development at AOL, where he was responsible for acquisitions and strategic planning, and a former management consultant at Bain and Company. Mr. Pearson was elected in 2023 as Mayor Pro Tem of the Town of Mountain Village, Colorado. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Wesleyan University, a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a Masters in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School.

Aarthi Sowrirajan. Ms. Sowrirajan serves on the Board of Directors of the Program
Administrator. Ms. Sowrirajan is a Managing Director at BlackRock. An experienced impact investor, Ms. Sowrirajan manages the implementation of the BlackRock Impact Opportunities (BIO) Fund – a private markets, multi-alternatives fund focused on investing through a racial equity lens. Previously, she worked for Turner Impact Capital, a real estate investor and developer, managing investment activities across its education and healthcare platforms. Ms. Sowrirajan formerly served as Chair of the Board of Directors for Equitas Charter School. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Business Administration from the Wharton School. 

Marlon Marshall. Mr. Marshall is the CEO of City Fund. Most recently, he was a founding partner at 270 Strategies. Mr. Marshall served as Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Director in the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, Deputy National Field Director for President Obama’s re-election campaign, and States Director for Hillary for America. Mr. Marshall holds a Bachelors in Communication Studies from the University of Kansas and Masters in Policy Management from Georgetown University.

Ricardo Beausoleil. Mr. Beausoleil serves as the Independent Director of ESRF pursuant to ESRF’s Operating Agreement which means a natural person who, for the five-year period prior to his or her appointment as Independent Director has not been, and during the continuation of his or her service as Independent Director is not: (i) an employee, director, stockholder, partner, equity holder, creditor, debtor or officer of ESRF, the Program Administrator or any of their affiliates (other than his or her service as an
independent director of any special purpose bankruptcy remote entity); (ii) a customer or supplier of ESRF or any of its affiliates; or (iii) any member of the immediate family of a person described in (i) or (ii). The Independent Director is an employee of a nationally recognized corporate service provider.

The Program Administrator Senior Staff and Administration. The Program Administrator employs nineteen full-time professionals in various lending and operating capacities, whose collective prior professional experience includes senior roles as public finance investment bankers, commercial lender, not- for-profit lender, tax-exempt bond investor, rating agency analyst as well as other staff members who held senior finance and operating roles at high-performing charter schools. The Program Administrator staff
has specific charter school analytical experience, including approximately 300 charter school transactions for over $3 billion and sector leadership in charter school research. Senior management personnel of the Program Administrator are as follows:

Anand Kesavan, Chief Executive Officer and Founder. Mr. Kesavan founded ESRF combining his experience as a public finance investment banker, charter school chief financial officer (KIPP), and leader of a charter school philanthropic facilities fund. As a seasoned investment banker, charter school executive, and education philanthropist, Mr. Kesavan is passionate about creating efficient and transparent financial credit markets, optimizing school financial models, solving educational inequalities and using philanthropy to do so in a scalable and sustainable manner. Prior to founding ESRF, Mr. Kesavan led the Structured Finance group for the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF), where he helped identify the nation’s best schools for investment. Prior to CSGF, he served as chief financial officer of KIPP Austin Public Schools. Prior to KIPP, Mr. Kesavan spent more than a decade in senior investment banking roles, financing more than $10,000,000,000 in public projects, including state revolving funds and K-12 schools, with a specialty in credit ratings & quantitative structuring. Mr. Kesavan is a graduate of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Education Pioneers Fellowship. 

Michelle Getz, Chief Credit Officer and Partner. Ms. Getz is charged with building the Program Administrator’s credit platform and leading a thorough credit diligence and approval process for each charter school loan. Additionally, she leads the loan closing, loan servicing and portfolio management processes. She brings with her nearly 30 years of professional experience, including 18 years at Nuveen Asset Management. During her time at Nuveen, Ms. Getz developed and refined the firm’s charter school.