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Ryan Smith, director of education programs and policy at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, has been named one of Education Week‘s Ten People Who Are Changing Education Today — an annual list of under-35 reformers and innovators who might not yet be on your radar but should (or soon will) be.

According to his LinkedIn, Smith did stints working at Green Dot and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools before joining United Way last year.

“Today’s young generation of education reformers and innovators… have tremendous respect for reformers who laid the groundwork for them in the 1990s and 2000s,” according to Sara Mead, the Washington, DC-based policy analyst who compiled the national list. “But they are not bound by the disputes that have dominated the past decade of education reform.”

A profile of Smith is scheduled to be published in Education Week later today or on Monday.

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