Paul Leather is Director of the Interstate Learning Community for the Center for Innovation in Education. Mr. Leather’s background and experience in Education, Counseling, and Administration in New Hampshire spans four decades. He served as the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Education in New Hampshire for eight years, and has also served for 18 years as the Director of the Division of Career Technology and Adult Learning for the Department, overseeing numerous statewide initiatives and programs. In 1997, Mr. Leather began a journey to create a state model for competency-based education. This effort resulted in the development and implementation of the NH student mastery model now in place as part of NH’s system. More recently, he led the development of a first-in-the-nation next generation educational accountability model, called “Performance Assessment of Competency Education,” or PACE, approved as a pilot program by the US Department of Education starting with four NH districts in March 2015. For C!E, he co-leads the 8 state Interstate Learning Community and the Intermediary Organization Learning Community with Gretchen Morgan.