Who We Are

We are students of life and
optimists at heart.
Where we see fire,we run towards it.

We are all Tillman Scholars – veterans and military spouses – and allies who believe that college can be redesigned to better serve students, employers, and the world. We are first generation college students, parents, researchers, and world class athletes. We’ve served on, and led, elite teams where outcomes mattered.

Among us, we have over a 100 years of postsecondary education, over 75 years of military service, and over 50 years as professors in traditional higher education.

We are building the future of college.

We are building Polymath University.

Senior Advisors

Brian Rosenberg, PhD

Cambridge, MA – Visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Rosenberg served as President of Macalester College for 17 years. The author of Whatever It Is, I'm Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education also serves as senior advisor and director at the African Leadership University and as a member of the board of the Teagle Foundation. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Columbia University.

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Ryan Craig, JD

New York, NY – Managing Director at Achieve Partners, Ryan is a former school founder and co-founder of Apprenticeships for America, a nonprofit dedicated to scaling apprenticeships across the U.S. economy. The author of Apprentice Nation: How the “Earn and Learn” Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America and A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternative to College, Ryan is a frequent author in his newsletter Gap Letter, and Forbes and Inside Higher Education. He holds a bachelor’s and law degree from Yale University.

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Founder

Dan Futrell

Chicago, IL – Dan started life in foster care and then was raised by a single dad who earned his GED after dropping out of high school, and who worked rotating shifts for 50 years at a housing insulation factory in California. Growing up in a home with a heavy emphasis on the power of education, Dan earned an ROTC scholarship at Gonzaga University and later a masters from Harvard Kennedy School.

Dan most recently served as CEO of the Pat Tillman Foundation where he launched the Tillman Leadership Institute and was twice recognized in the top ten nonprofits to work for in the country. He has worked in operational and strategic roles in the nonprofit and private sector for the last 20 years, in addition to 6 years of elected service on a municipal school board. Dan is an avid marathoner with a 2:48 best and once led an expedition that found the missing black box from a 30 year old commercial plane crash on a 20,000 foot mountain in South America. With five years’ service in the U.S. Army as an airborne Ranger-qualified infantry officer, during which he was twice awarded a bronze star medal and a combat infantryman’s badge for service in Iraq, Dan is also a Tillman Scholar and a Truman Fellow.
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