Meet GreatSchools: Jaime Uzeta

As our vice president of growth strategy and development, Jaime Uzeta can be somewhat of the public face of GreatSchools. He’s usually spotted away from the office, in board rooms and conference centers, where he evangelizes our mission for parental involvement and student success. Drawing from his diverse experiences at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and MTV, Jaime plays a key role in our external affairs and strategic planning. Here are our three questions for him:

What inspires you about the GreatSchools mission?
Jaime: I love being a part of this effort to improve education by inspiring parents to get more involved. As the father of two kids, I know how confusing and challenging it can be to navigate the variety of schooling options for your children. I’m delighted that we get to serve as a lighthouse for parents who are seeking the best educational path for their loved ones.

Also, our understanding of the role of parents in their children’s success in school (and career and life) is continually evolving. We know more today about how best to prepare and support our children than we knew even a few years ago, and certainly more than when I was a child. It’s incredibly exciting that we’re able to share that information with parents and provide them with a road map to parenting for educational success.

Who in your childhood most inspired your love of learning?
Jaime: My father. As someone who faced various forms of ethnic and racial discrimination as a child, he saw education as the ultimate form of empowerment. He was fond of saying that no matter what people can do to you, they can never take away the power of the information you have in your mind. He was the king of encyclopedias and loved being asked questions for which he did not know the answer, so he could look them up.

What’s the best parenting advice you’ve heard?
Jaime: As my father has told me on a number of occasions, you can do all the research you want, talk to all the experts, do all the right things, and then the unexpected happens. At the end of the day, you have to do your best to create the most positive environment for your child, but you have to accept that there are some things you can’t control. I think the poet Kahlil Gibran describes this eloquently in his poem “On Children.”

Thanks, Jaime! There really aren't any clear, perfect answers in parenting. Jaime: We can only give our children our best.

Comments

[Marisa Procter on May 19, 2009 at 10:38 AM]

Thank you! I appreciate the information shared by him.

So insightful!
Marisa

[Amy Mishra on June 01, 2009 at 11:41 AM]

Great piece! I love this quote "He was fond of saying that no matter what people can do to you, they can never take away the power of the information you have in your mind."

[Ray Joiner on August 21, 2009 at 07:49 PM]

What a valuable service GreatSchools provides! Since the reality of any school changes over time, I would propose that you automatically delete any reviews which are more than four years old. Parents trying to choose a school will want reasonably current information.