Jessica Neyman — Chief Human Resources Officer

Jessica Neyman is an experienced senior educational executive with a law background who has a proven track-record of advancement of mission and objectives in balance with employee needs. She currently serves as the Houston Independent School District's Chief Human Resources Officer. Her career-long passion for student success spanning over two decades drives her ongoing commitment to employee satisfaction, since she sees this as the critical component in fulfilling the educational mission. 

Prior to her current role, Neyman served as the Vice President of Human Resources at IDEA Public Schools, the largest network of charter schools in the United States. In this role, she oversaw all multi-state HR functions to ensure staff received superior customer service, so they in turn remained highly effective at educating over 80,000 college-bound students. 

Before her work at IDEA Public Schools, Neyman led the HR department as the Chief Human Resources Officer at Killeen ISD, which is the fourth most diverse district in Texas and serves the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Forces and surrounding communities. She oversaw the departments of HR Operations, Recruitment & Retention, Auxiliary Staff Services, Substitute Services, Risk Management, and Employee Benefits. Her team not only played a vital role in providing employment and educational stability for military families who experience frequent deployments, but also ensured that all employees received the support they needed to function as a well-orchestrated team to prepare students for their futures. During her tenure, she also successfully shepherded the District through the challenging financial transition of becoming self-insured, which resulted in immediate cost-savings and greatly enhanced employee benefits, as well as created the critical foundation for longitudinal affordability of these critical benefits.  

Neyman began her career in education at North Clackamas School District in Oregon, where she served dual roles as the District's in-house legal counsel and Associate Director for HR to manage all employee relations, including collective bargaining with three different school employee unions. Prior to that, she provided legal representation to union-member employees in labor relations, as well as families in special education matters. She has also served in HR leadership and consulting roles in other fast-growth Texas districts, including Georgetown ISD and Lockhart ISD. And she brings private sector HR consulting experience from the oil & gas industry, which inspires her to relentlessly advocate for more innovative, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to HR in the public sector.

In a brief hiatus from her professional career to raise her son, she served a four-year school board term where she played a key role in the hiring of superintendents, navigating cuts to public education funding, and approving annual budgets and policy updates. She also helped facilitate multiple successful bond measures and the governance aspects of bond construction project management. 

Neyman earned her law degree from the University of San Diego School of Law, where she was awarded the Outstanding Public Interest Advocate Award and the Alec L. Cory Pro Bono Award for contributions to pro bono causes. During law school, she was elected Vice President of the National Association for Public Interest Law in Washington D.C. and established a Special Education Volunteer Lawyer Project. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, where she was the recipient of the prestigious Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Social Sciences grant. She also holds a Texas Superintendent Certificate.