New Board of Ed member: Paymon Rouhanifard

State House News is reporting that Governor Baker is appointing Paymon Rouhanifard to the Massachusetts Board of K-12 Education. He will replace Margaret McKenna (whose terms are up, and who I will MISS!).
As for Rouhandifard, who moved to Massachusetts this year from New Jersey (when his wife Sara Rouhandifard, assistant professor of bioengineering at Northeastern, began working there), his best-known and most recent connection with education was as the receiver of the Camden Public Schools, appointed by Governor Chris Christie. You can read his reflection on that experience here, which opens with this:

Only New Orleans, which was re-created as a nearly all-charter district after Hurricane Katrina, has a higher proportion of students in charters.

The best piece looking at him and his work is from Eliza Shapiro in Politico; she would tell you herself to ignore the headline. Note his close relationship with the Democratic party chair, the state's adoption of the "Renaissance" model for charters, and consider the recent New Bedford parallel. He also did say to Shapiro: “We don’t know how much right now it costs to educate a student in poverty living in Camden,” which potentially could bear out in terms of the Board's position (or lack thereof) on the foundation budget reconsideration.
His two years of teaching in New York City were with Teach for America and he did go through Broad Center. His position with Propel Inc is as a result of a partnership with John White, the state superintendent of the Louisiana school system.
His speech last year at MIT in which he said:

If life outcomes are indeed what we are about, we should welcome state test scores going down.

 ...is I think the piece that is perhaps most interesting, which he knew:

As he sipped a green tea at a Starbucks outside of Boston, where he recently moved with his family, Rouhanifard flashes a quick grin when asked about his comment. “That may have been the most provocative thing I said that day,” he says. “It was intentional.”

If you're interested, read the whole thing, but a final piece of interest:

The basic rule, what we would want for our own children, should apply to all kids.

That's a pretty good perspective for a Board member to be using.