President and Chief Executive Officer
Tara Scarlett serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Scarlett Family Foundation, a Middle Tennessee-based foundation working to ensure all students have access to a high-quality education.
Scarlett has been an active advocate for education reform for twenty years and has served as a Foundation board member since its founding in 2005. She has an extensive private sector track record of innovative leadership and a proven ability to bring people together to achieve results. She pairs this experience with a passion for creating opportunity for students of all ages and backgrounds.
Under Scarlett’s leadership and direction, the Scarlett Family Foundation has made a major and meaningful impact on early literacy, public education, and college and career readiness and success across Middle Tennessee.
In addition to providing direct college scholarships to more than 700 deserving students from 37 different counties, the Foundation funds numerous nonprofits and organizations active in the region, including 30 organization focused on early and adult literacy, 17 focused on college and career readiness, and nearly a dozen focused on preparing, supporting and retaining outstanding classroom teachers and school leaders. Scarlett also helped launch the Nashville Literacy Collaborative, and the Foundation has regularly provided the community with important school characteristics and performance data in an effort to improve the quality of all public schools in Nashville.
Scarlett’s dedication to making a positive impact on the lives of students and families and to transform education has also led to her recent appointment as a Chairwoman for Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the state’s agency directly responsible for the oversight and operation of degree and non-degree granting accredited and unaccredited postsecondary institutions, and as Chairwoman for Tennessee’s Education and Innovation Commission, formed in 2020 to examine the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on education.
Scarlett also serves as a board member for Tennesseans for Quality Early Education, Communities in Schools of Tennessee, and Tennessee’s State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE), an independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan advocacy and research institution, founded in 2009 by Senator Bill Frist, MD, former US Senate Majority Leader, that measures success by the academic growth and achievement of Tennessee’s students.
Scarlett is a past board member and continued supporter of the YWCA, and Chair of the Education Committee with the Nashville Zoo. She remains engaged in the business innovation space, serving as a board member for Studio Bank, and as an advisor for Synchronous Health. She is a member of International Women’s Forum, the Tennessee Learning Circle, and volunteered as a “Big” with the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program. Scarlett is an alumna of 2019 Leadership Nashville, 2019 Leadership Tennessee 2019, and 2021 Harvard Young American Leaders Program.
Prior to joining the Scarlett Family Foundation in 2016, Scarlett spent 20 years in marketing leadership roles for two of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods companies: The Coca-Cola Company North America and Mars Petcare North America. Scarlett attended Scales Elementary, is a graduate of Harpeth Hall School, holds a bachelor’s degree from Ohio Wesleyan University, and a Master of Education Policy and Leadership from American University. She lives with her husband, two children, and two dogs in Nashville.
