Charles Hokanson is Senior Vice President, Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships for Helios Education Foundation, where he leads Helios' staff engagement with the community and stakeholders to improve quality, access, and achievement across the birth-16 education continuum in Florida.

Mr. Hokanson’s career has bridged the worlds of nonprofit, private sector, and government policy development and executive management. As President and CEO of Hokanson Consulting Group LLC, Mr. Hokanson provided strategic and public policy advice to nonprofit, think tank, trade association, and federal and state agency clients. Mr. Hokanson previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education and Chief of Staff to the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, as president or executive vice president of three national education reform nonprofits, and as professional staff to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce.

He currently serves as Board Chair of the Florida Education Foundation as well as Hostelling International USA, and sits on the governing boards of Leadership Florida (Secretary-Treasurer and co-chair, statewide education advisory committee), the Florida Chamber Foundation (investment committee chair) and Florida Philanthropic Network (Secretary and policy committee chair). Mr. Hokanson is also a member of the advisory boards for the Florida College Access Network (Chair), Florida TaxWatch’s Education and Workforce Policy Council (Vice Chair), the Florida College System’s Student Success Center, the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations, the Center for Postsecondary Success at Florida State University, and Teach for America Miami-Dade.

Mr. Hokanson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, earning a BA in History and American Studies and an MA in History, before earning a Master of Public Policy degree at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a JD at Harvard Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, one of the nation’s largest-circulated, student-edited law reviews.

With Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Andrew Rotherham, Mr. Hokanson is co-editor of Rethinking Special Education for a New Century (2001), which recommended sweeping changes in federal special education policy, and has authored or co-authored op eds published in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications.