Maria Allen

Maria is a former TV News Producer (ABC News) who now produces online educational content for the web. In 2004, she compiled data which revealed that academically, minority students in FCPS lagged behind their peers in all of the large urban and suburban Virginia school districts. Her findings which went largely ignored by FCPS, drew considerable attention in the press, and resulted in an invitation to participate on a panel discussion with the Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and educational historian Diane Ravitch. While a producer for ABC News, Maria spent eight years based in Moscow where she covered events leading up to and during the breakup of the Soviet Union. During that time, she traveled twice to Afghanistan where the Soviet Union was engaged in a lengthy war, and she was part of the press corps accompanying Soviet leader Gorbachev in China when protests led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Maria received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Georgetown University School of Service and furthered her studies with a mid-career fellowship at Harvard University.