CLX Executive Director Maria Hibbs Announces Retirement

Dear CLX friends and colleagues,

It is with mixed emotions that I share the news that Maria Hibbs, the Chicago Learning Exchange’s Executive Director, plans to retire on December 31, 2019. Although she will no longer be leading the organization on a day-to-day basis, my fellow board members and I look forward to welcoming her to the board upon her retirement. She is not bidding us farewell, but instead will simply change the hat she wears in support of the CLX mission.

As many of you know, Maria was instrumental in creating CLX two years ago by bringing together the work of the Hive Chicago Learning Network, an initiative of the Mozilla Foundation, and the Hive Chicago Fund for Connected Learning, housed at The Chicago Community Trust. Maria joined Chicago’s work to advance interest-driven learning in 2013, leading the Hive Fund’s investments in innovation to close the equity gaps faced by thousands of young people in Chicago. She and Hive Network Director Sam Dyson collaborated closely to grow a robust community of out-of-school-time educators supported by professional development, peer learning, and grant funding to fuel the development of great new ideas. In 2018, Maria and Sam co-founded CLX to make Chicago a connected community where all learning counts—whether in school, out of school, online or on the job.

We are proud that CLX is remaking learning in Chicago so it’s driven by learners’ interests, enhanced by technology, and connected to opportunity. Our career pathways and digital badging work is making it possible to connect youth interests, career exploration and workforce development experiences across organizations and contexts. The CLX community, now consisting of more than 200 youth-serving organizations, serves as a lever for social change, affecting individuals, organizations, and systems alike. In partnership with educators, young people, parents, museums, libraries, nonprofits, advocacy groups, and after-school programs, CLX seeks to influence policy with the potential to move society.

The CLX Board acknowledges the vision and hard work involved in building on the success of the Hive Network and Fund to create a new entity with a bold mission and solid foundation. In co-founding CLX, Maria has considered it her role to bring CLX to this point and to pass the torch to a new generation of leadership. So, we are embarking on a search for our next Executive Director. Applications and nominations are being received by Rhyan Zweifler, President of Noetic Search. Please click here to submit a current resume and cover letter. More information is available at www.noeticexsearch.com.

I ask that you join the Board and me in congratulating Maria on a lifetime of work starting as a journalist, college instructor, corporate leader, nonprofit executive, changemaker and creator of opportunity. She says she looks forward to spending more time with her family and contributing more energy to her causes, as she calls them. We are grateful that one of those causes is CLX.

Daniel O. Ash,

Chairman, Board of Directors

Chicago Learning Exchange