Donald Kamentz
Founder and CEO
Contigo Ed
Donald Kamentz is a skilled facilitator and education consultant utilizing his diverse experiences in both non-profit management and K-12 education to help organizations best serve all student populations. As the Founder and CEO of Contigo Ed, Donald Kamentz brings his over 25+ years of diverse experiences and passion of working in the postsecondary access and success arenas to help ensure all students, regardless of their backgrounds and the schools they attend, are advised by highly-trained, skilled, and effective educators committed to helping them thrive and reach their fullest potential.
Most recently, he served as Executive Director of Character Lab, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the science and practice of character development. Comprising a team of researchers, educators, and designers, Character Lab believes character skills are malleable and measurable, character development can enhance academic performance, and finally, character strengths are as important to long-term life outcomes as are IQ and socioeconomic status.
Before Character Lab, Donald spent 16 years, lastly as managing director of college and career initiatives, at YES Prep Public Schools, a public charter school system in Houston, Texas. Under his leadership, he created a college access program recognized nationally as a model for supporting first-generation, low-income students to and through college. Prior to joining YES Prep, Donald spent five years with Teach For America in a variety of roles, most recently as the Executive Director for Institute Operations.
Donald has been a member of both the National Association of College Admission Counseling (NACAC) and the Texas Association for College Admission Counseling (TACAC) since 1999. For NACAC, Donald served on the Current Trends and Futures Issues Committee for 5 years, the last two as Committee Chair. For TACAC, he served as a Secondary School Delegate to NACAC’s National Assembly, as well as lead faculty chair for seven years of the College Counseling track of TACAC/College Board’s Admissions and College Counseling Summer Institute — a training program designed to assist and fully train new college counselors with all aspects of the college admissions process. Donald was also elected to serve for a three-year term of state President for TACAC, the first charter school representative to do so in the history of the organization.
Due to his work and success, Donald is a frequent speaker on local, statewide, and national panels on both social-emotional research and practice, as well as the college counseling and alumni support process, in particular for first-generation, college-bound students.
Donald earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science, with a minor in international affairs-Latin American Studies, from The George Washington University. Donald is a Cambiar Education Fellow, a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
