John W. Hodge, Ed.D

Dr. Hodge has over 28 years of experience in education, and is a nationally recognized consultant.  During his career, Dr. Hodge has provided training and support to educators in over 300 rural, urban, and suburban school districts that serve over a million students in the United States, Canada, and South America. His work and expertise are particularly focused on the areas of leadership, student achievement, equity, student resilience, poverty, and high academic achievement despite the presence of risk-factors. Prior to starting his career in education, Dr. Hodge distinguished himself in the service of our country with the 7th Infantry Division of the United States Army.    


Prior to launching Urban Learning and Leadership Center, Dr. Hodge served as a reading teacher, English teacher, AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) teacher, and Assistant Principal of a large urban middle school that received recognition by the United States Department of Education as a National Blue-Ribbon School.  Following his success in this position, Dr. Hodge was named Associate Director of AVID Center Eastern Division where he provided training and support to all AVID schools and district support teams in the eastern United States. This important work included all AVID schools in the state of Illinois.   


Dr. Hodge’s passion and enthusiasm for working with underserved student populations resulted in him being named Director of An Achievable Dream Academy, a high-poverty inner city school in the commonwealth of Virginia. An Achievable Dream served over 1,000 K-12 students, over 95% of whom lived in poverty. It was here that many of the interventions used by ULLC  were piloted. Under the leadership of Dr. Hodge, An Achievable Dream Academy was named a National School of Character and won the Mutual of America Community Partnership Award (MACPA), a national award that annually recognizes organizations that make significant societal impact.  Dr. Hodge’s leadership, expertise and collaborative spirit resulted in the academy becoming a fully accredited, high-performing school.