Keith Sutton is an advocate, a fighter, and a leader.
Keith Sutton has built his career as an education leader, advocate and public servant on the foundation of civil rights and justice for all. For the past decade, he has served as a member of the Wake County School Board where he and his colleagues are focused on increasing access to healthy schools and closing the achievement gap.
He is the founder of FocusED LLC, a firm designed to support organizations in the improvement and transformation of education. Sutton currently serves as an education innovation consultant where he specializes in providing clients with consultative services focused on developing innovative, high-quality solutions to complex challenges in the education sector.
Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Sutton served as the excellence director for BEST NC where he worked to effectively engage a network of members and partners to provide comprehensive support to students, elevate educators and to raise expectations of learning in North Carolina; design and implement strategy to maintain and nurture BEST NC’s partnerships to ensure the collective impact of our work; convened and facilitated working groups on such issues as early childhood educators’ compensation and school accountability; and manage and execute excellence partner convening including event planning in partnerships with a diverse body of organizations and individuals.
Sutton also spent time as a policy development analyst and program development coordinator with the Department of Public Safety, a legislative affairs program manager with the North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. His political experience includes work as a deputy director for the North Carolina Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign and outreach director for the Bev Purdue Committee.
He has also served in a number of leadership positions with organizations like the Triangle Urban League and the North Carolina NAACP, as well as a member of Healthy Schools Task Force for the Wake County Public School System, the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, the Blue Ribbon Committee on the Future of Wake County for the Wake County Board of Commissioners and the Southeast Raleigh Assembly for the City of Raleigh.
Sutton earned his bachelor’s in industrial relations from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his master’s in education entrepreneurship at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of Unity Lodge #64, Prince Hall Masons, the Iota Iota Chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., and the proud father of two beautiful daughters, Alexia and Makayla.