Kandice Sumner, Ph.D., has spent her entire life living, researching, and advancing the purpose and promise of METCO. A Weston/METCO alumna, lifelong educator, researcher, and educational nonprofit leader, she now serves as President & CEO of METCO, Inc., bringing both lived experience and professional expertise to shepherding the organization into its next 60 years.

Born and raised in Boston, Kandice is the granddaughter of a civil rights activist and organizing parent of Operation Exodus, the community-led movement that helped lay the groundwork for METCO. Her own educational journey continued that legacy. As a Weston/METCO student, Kandice experienced firsthand both the transformative opportunities and complexities of school desegregation. Her story and perspective have been featured in two documentaries chronicling the METCO experience: Far From Home (2005) and Code Switching (2019), as well as her widely viewed TED Talk, "How America’s Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty" (2015).

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Spelman College, Kandice began her career as a Boston Public Schools teacher and went on to serve as a teacher, administrator, instructional leader, and educational consultant across urban and suburban school communities. She later co-founded and served as Co-Executive Director of Educators for AntiRacism, a nonprofit providing educators with practical tools to create and sustain antiracist classrooms, schools, districts, and teacher preparation programs.

Kandice earned her Ph.D. in Urban Educational Policy Studies from UMass Boston, grounding her scholarship in the very experience that shaped her life. Her dissertation, Native Daughter: A Lived Experience of Desegregation, uses an autoethnographic framework to examine the lived experience of school desegregation and calls for greater attention to the social-emotional, mental health, and racial identity development of Black students navigating predominantly white institutions.

As President & CEO of METCO, Inc., Kandice brings these experiences full circle. Her leadership is rooted in ensuring that the voices and lived experiences of students, families, and alumni inform METCO’s future, while expanding access to the extraordinary educational, cultural, professional, and community resources available in their own backyard and beyond. As METCO enters its next 60 years, Kandice is committed to honoring the courage of those who built the movement while ensuring that today’s students can experience the full promise of what they began.