The Fifth Down: A.F.C. Championship Live Analysis: Patriots 13, Ravens 7

Commentary and live analysis from Sunday’s A.F.C. championship game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. Ben Hoffman previewed the game, which is a rematch of the teams’ meeting in last year’s title game. The Ravens got a measure of revenge with a last-second win earlier this season, but that isn’t nearly enough for them. Until kickoff (6:30 p.m. Eastern on CBS), feel free to chime in with your thoughts, your previews and comments. But as we said with the early game, please try to rise above things like “Tom Brady is wicked good, man. Wicked good.”

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BlackBerry 10 camera software revealed, including built-in Instagram-like photo filters [video]

Just when we start to think we know everything there is to know about BlackBerry 10, new details leak. Mobile blog The Gadget Masters on Friday published a video revealing the new BlackBerry 10 camera software included on a pre-release version of the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. While the software on this prototype phone likely isn’t final, several new features that will be included in RIM’s (RIMM) new BlackBerry 10 camera software are displayed in the video. Among the highlights is a built-in photo editor that includes cropping, rotation and Instagram-like photo filters. The full video follows below.

[More from BGR: RIM heats up as BlackBerry 10 launch nears]

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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ABC News' Barbara Walters hospitalized after fall

NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran ABC newswoman Barbara Walters has fallen at an inauguration party at an ambassador's home in Washington and has been hospitalized.

Walters, 83, fell Saturday night on a step at the residence of Britain's ambassador to the United States, Peter Westmacott, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. The fall left Walters with a cut on her forehead, he said.

Walters, out of an abundance of caution, went to a hospital for treatment of the cut and for a full examination, Schneider said on Sunday. She was alert and was "telling everyone what to do, which we all take as a very positive sign," he said.

It was unclear when Walters might be released from the hospital, which ABC didn't identify.

Walters was TV news' first female superstar, making headlines in 1976 as a network anchor with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary. During more than three decades at ABC, and before that at NBC, her exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty and entertainers have brought her celebrity status. In 1997, she created "The View," a live weekday talk show that became an unexpected hit.

Walters had heart surgery in May 2010 but returned to active duty on "The View" that September, declaring, "I'm fine!"

Even in her ninth decade, Walters continues to keep a busy schedule, including appearances on "The View," prime-time interviews and her annual special, "10 Most Fascinating People," on which, in December, she asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie if he considered himself fit enough to be president someday. (Christie, although acknowledging he is "more than a little" overweight, replied he would be up to the job.)

Last June, Walters apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. She acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a one-time press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December 2011.

Walters said she realized the help she offered Jaafari was a conflict and said, "I regret that."

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Well: Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor housecat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

But Holly not only had distinctive black-and-brown harlequin patterns on her fur, but also an implanted microchip to identify her.

“I really believe these stories, but they’re just hard to explain,” said Marc Bekoff, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado. “Maybe being street-smart, maybe reading animal cues, maybe being able to read cars, maybe being a good hunter. I have no data for this.”

There is, in fact, little scientific dogma on cat navigation. Migratory animals like birds, turtles and insects have been studied more closely, and use magnetic fields, olfactory cues, or orientation by the sun.

Scientists say it is more common, although still rare, to hear of dogs returning home, perhaps suggesting, Dr. Bradshaw said, that they have inherited wolves’ ability to navigate using magnetic clues. But it’s also possible that dogs get taken on more family trips, and that lost dogs are more easily noticed or helped by people along the way.

Cats navigate well around familiar landscapes, memorizing locations by sight and smell, and easily figuring out shortcuts, Dr. Bradshaw said.

Strange, faraway locations would seem problematic, although he and Patrick Bateson, a behavioral biologist at Cambridge University, say that cats can sense smells across long distances. “Let’s say they associate the smell of pine with wind coming from the north, so they move in a southerly direction,” Dr. Bateson said.

Peter Borchelt, a New York animal behaviorist, wondered if Holly followed the Florida coast by sight or sound, tracking Interstate 95 and deciding to “keep that to the right and keep the ocean to the left.”

But, he said, “nobody’s going to do an experiment and take a bunch of cats in different directions and see which ones get home.”

The closest, said Roger Tabor, a British cat biologist, may have been a 1954 study in Germany which cats placed in a covered circular maze with exits every 15 degrees most often exited in the direction of their homes, but more reliably if their homes were less than five kilometers away.

New research by the National Geographic and University of Georgia’s Kitty Cams Project, using video footage from 55 pet cats wearing video cameras on their collars, suggests cat behavior is exceedingly complex.

For example, the Kitty Cams study found that four of the cats were two-timing their owners, visiting other homes for food and affection. Not every cat, it seems, shares Holly’s loyalty.

KittyCams also showed most of the cats engaging in risky behavior, including crossing roads and “eating and drinking substances away from home,” risks Holly undoubtedly experienced and seems lucky to have survived.

But there have been other cats who made unexpected comebacks.

“It’s actually happened to me,” said Jackson Galaxy, a cat behaviorist who hosts “My Cat From Hell” on Animal Planet. While living in Boulder, Colo., he moved across town, whereupon his indoor cat, Rabbi, fled and appeared 10 days later at the previous house, “walking five miles through an area he had never been before,” Mr. Galaxy said.

Professor Tabor cited longer-distance reports he considered credible: Murka, a tortoiseshell in Russia, traveling about 325 miles home to Moscow from her owner’s mother’s house in Voronezh in 1989; Ninja, who returned to Farmington, Utah, in 1997, a year after her family moved from there to Mill Creek, Wash.; and Howie, an indoor Persian cat in Australia who in 1978 ran away from relatives his vacationing family left him with and eventually traveled 1,000 miles to his family’s home.

Professor Tabor also said a Siamese in the English village of Black Notley repeatedly hopped a train, disembarked at White Notley, and walked several miles back to Black Notley.

Still, explaining such journeys is not black and white.

In the Florida case, one glimpse through the factual fog comes on the little cat’s feet. While Dr. Bradshaw speculated Holly might have gotten a lift, perhaps sneaking under the hood of a truck heading down I-95, her paws suggest she was not driven all the way, nor did Holly go lightly.

“Her pads on her feet were bleeding,” Ms. Richter said. “Her claws are worn weird. The front ones are really sharp, the back ones worn down to nothing.”

Scientists say that is consistent with a long walk, since back feet provide propulsion, while front claws engage in activities like tearing. The Richters also said Holly had gone from 13.5 to 7 pounds.

Holly hardly seemed an adventurous wanderer, though her background might have given her a genetic advantage. Her mother was a feral cat roaming the Richters’ mobile home park, and Holly was born inside somebody’s air-conditioner, Ms. Richter said. When, at about six weeks old, Holly padded into their carport and jumped into the lap of Mr. Richter’s mother, there were “scars on her belly from when the air conditioner was turned on,” Ms. Richter said.

Scientists say that such early experience was too brief to explain how Holly might have been comfortable in the wild — after all, she spent most of her life as an indoor cat, except for occasionally running outside to chase lizards. But it might imply innate personality traits like nimbleness or toughness.

“You’ve got these real variations in temperament,” Dr. Bekoff said. “Fish can by shy or bold; there seem to be shy and bold spiders. This cat, it could be she has the personality of a survivor.”

He said being an indoor cat would not extinguish survivalist behaviors, like hunting mice or being aware of the sun’s orientation.

The Richters — Bonnie, 63, a retired nurse, and Jacob, 70, a retired airline mechanics’ supervisor and accomplished bowler — began traveling with Holly only last year, and she easily tolerated a hotel, a cabin or the R.V.

But during the Good Sam R.V. Rally in Daytona, when they were camping near the speedway with 3,000 other motor homes, Holly bolted when Ms. Richter’s mother opened the door one night. Fireworks the next day may have further spooked her, and, after searching for days, alerting animal agencies and posting fliers, the Richters returned home catless.

Two weeks later, an animal rescue worker called the Richters to say a cat resembling Holly had been spotted eating behind the Daytona franchise of Hooters, where employees put out food for feral cats.

Then, on New Year’s Eve, Barb Mazzola, a 52-year-old university executive assistant, noticed a cat “barely standing” in her backyard in West Palm Beach, struggling even to meow. Over six days, Ms. Mazzola and her children cared for the cat, putting out food, including special milk for cats, and eventually the cat came inside.

They named her Cosette after the orphan in Les Misérables, and took her to a veterinarian, Dr. Sara Beg at Paws2Help. Dr. Beg said the cat was underweight and dehydrated, had “back claws and nail beds worn down, probably from all that walking on pavement,” but was “bright and alert” and had no parasites, heartworm or viruses. “She was hesitant and scared around people she didn’t know, so I don’t think she went up to people and got a lift,” Dr. Beg said. “I think she made the journey on her own.”

At Paws2Help, Ms. Mazzola said, “I almost didn’t want to ask, because I wanted to keep her, but I said, ‘Just check and make sure she doesn’t have a microchip.’” When told the cat did, “I just cried.”

The Richters cried, too upon seeing Holly, who instantly relaxed when placed on Mr. Richter’s shoulder. Re-entry is proceeding well, but the mystery persists.

“We haven’t the slightest idea how they do this,” Mr. Galaxy said. “Anybody who says they do is lying, and, if you find it, please God, tell me what it is.”

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Myspace Is Accused of Using Music Without Permission

Last week, Justin Timberlake’s new song, “Suit & Tie,” did double promotional duty. Not only was it a teaser for Mr. Timberlake’s latest album, but it also served as an introduction for a revamped version of Myspace, the once-mighty social network and music site.

Noel Celis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Justin Timberlake is one of the investors in Myspace.

Mr. Timberlake is a minority partner in the investor group that bought Myspace for $35 million in 2011, six years after News Corporation paid $580 million for it with hopes of dominating the social Web. Before long it was eclipsed by Facebook and fell into the dustbin of the Internet.

The new Myspace, which like the old MySpace lets people listen to huge numbers of songs free, has won early praise for its sleek design. But while it has said its intention is to help artists, it may already have a problem with some of the independent record labels that supply much of its content.

Although Myspace boasts the biggest library in digital music — more than 50 million songs, it says — a group representing thousands of small labels says the service is using its members’ music without permission.

The group, Merlin, negotiates digital deals on behalf of labels around the world. Charles Caldas, chief executive of Merlin, said in an interview on Friday that its deal with Myspace expired over a year ago, yet songs from more than 100 of its labels are still available on Myspace, including Beggars Group, Domino and Merge, three of the biggest independents.

“While it’s nice that Mr. Timberlake is launching his service on this platform, and acting as an advocate for the platform,” Mr. Caldas said, “on the other hand his peers as artists are being exploited without permission and not getting remuneration for it.”

Neda Azarfar, a spokeswoman for Myspace, said the company had decided not to renew its contract with Merlin, and that if songs from its member labels were still on the site, “they were likely uploaded by users” and would be removed if requested by the label.

In December, Myspace.com had 27.4 million unique visitors in the United States, according to comScore. That is far from its peak of 76 million in 2008, but for a music industry still struggling for all the business it can get, it is an audience that cannot be ignored.

The industry as a whole is largely supportive of Myspace, which is now seen as an underdog facing long odds. For small labels, though, the licensing situation has brought back memories of the introduction of MySpace’s first music service, MySpace Music, in 2008, when deals were cut with the major labels but most independents were left out for more than a year.

“The feeling is not good,” said William Crowley, the vice president for digital and mobile at eOne Distribution, an independent music distributor that is associated with Merlin.

“Unlicensed services are a source of grave concern,” he added, “especially high-profile ones.”

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News Analysis: In China, Discontent Among the Normally Faithful

Suzie Wong/Reuters

A steel plant in Beijing. Air pollution has surged in the north of China, prompting online outrage.

BEIJING — Barely two months into their jobs, the Communist Party’s new leaders are being confronted by the challenges posed by a constituency that has generally been one of the party’s most ardent supporters: the middle-class and well-off Chinese who have benefited from a three-decade economic boom.

A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party’s authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students, movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state: transparency.

More and more Chinese say they distrust the Wizard-of-Oz-style of control the Communist Party has exercised since it seized power in 1949, and they are asking their leaders to disseminate enough information so they can judge whether officials, who are widely believed to be corrupt, are doing their jobs properly. Without open information and discussion, they say, citizens cannot tell whether officials are delivering on basic needs.

“Chinese people want freedom of speech,” said Xiao Qinshan, 46, a man in a wheelchair at the Guangzhou protests.

China’s new leadership under Xi Jinping, who took over as general secretary of the party in November, is already feeling the pressure of these calls. Mr. Xi has announced a campaign against corruption, and propaganda officials, in a somewhat surprising move, allowed the state news media to run in-depth reports on the air pollution last week. Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor, said he believed that the leaders had decided “to face the problems.”

Some Chinese say that they and their compatriots, especially younger ones, are starting to realize that a secure life is dependent on the defense of certain principles, perhaps most crucially freedom of expression, and not just on the government meeting material needs. If a ruling party cannot police itself, then people want outsiders, like independent journalists, to do so.

Proof of that can be seen in the wild popularity of microblogs in which ordinary citizens frustrated by corruption post photographs of officials who wear expensive wristwatches. It was evident, too, when hundreds of ordinary people rallied in Guangzhou to defend Southern Weekend, a newspaper known for investigative reporting, against censorship.

“What’s interesting is that these protests were not over a practical issue but over a conceptual issue,” Hung Huang, a news media and fashion entrepreneur, said in a telephone interview. “People are beginning to understand these values are important to a better life, and beginning to understand that unless we all accept the same universal values, things will never really get better.”

Ms. Hung also said, though, that most Chinese were “very practical,” and that calls to action here were “very, very far away” from the kind of revolutionary fervor that had gripped the Arab world.

The Guangzhou rallies were fueled by an outpouring of support on the Internet for Southern Weekend, where journalists were protesting recent censorship rules. Celebrity gadflies with big followings among China’s 564 million Internet users urged the journalists onward. They included Yao Chen, a young actress who quoted the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in an online post, and Ms. Hung, who changed the logo on her microblog to that of Southern Weekend, also known as Southern Weekly. They ran risks by voicing their support; security officers reportedly interrogated some of the outspoken celebrities.

On the air pollution issue, prominent commentators have also taken to the virtual ramparts. Among those leading the calls for change is Pan Shiyi, a real estate tycoon. Mr. Pan’s demands that the government publicly release data on levels of PM 2.5, a potentially deadly particulate matter, contributed to an official decision that 74 cities would start reporting that information this year.

These elites are not just speaking to one another; they are also giving voice to widespread concerns among the middle class. Last Monday, in the middle of the record air pollution spike, there were 6.9 million mentions on a popular microblog platform of the term “Beijing air,” 6.7 million of “air quality” and 4.8 million of “PM 2.5.”

“It’s like never before, this consensus,” said Li Bo, director of Friends of Nature, an environmental advocacy group. “It took us so long to reach this consensus that China’s problems with the environment are rather serious.”

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li, Amy Qin and Shi Da contributed research.

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Google CEO Page on Apple’s ‘thermonuclear’ Android war: ‘How well is that working?’

Google (GOOG) CEO Larry Page seems unimpressed by Apple’s (AAPL) “thermonuclear war” against his company’s operating system. In an interview with Wired posted Thursday, Page was asked to respond to reports about the late Steve Jobs being “competitive enough to claim that he was willing to ‘go to thermonuclear war’ on Android.” Page responded with one sentence: “How well is that working?” Wired followed up by asking Page whether he though that “Android’s huge lead in market share is decisive” in the battle between the companies and Page only responded that “Android has been very successful, and we’re very excited about it.”

[More from BGR: Cable companies called ‘monopolies that stifle competition and innovation’]

While Apple’s strategy of suing Android vendors has had some notable successes for the company — particularly this past summer when it won a $ 1 billion patent verdict against rival Samsung (005930) — it still hasn’t stopped Android’s rise in both the smartphone and tablet markets, and devices such as the Galaxy S III and the Nexus 7 have proven to be among the most popular released over the past year. So when Page dismisses the significance of Apple’s legal war against Android, he’s got a good point: Some high-profile Apple victories have done very little to hurt consumer interest in Google’s open-source mobile OS so far.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Obamas join military families for kids' concert

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia are rocking out with hundreds of kids from military families and Washington-area public schools at the Kids' Inaugural Concert.

Pop star Usher started off the proceedings Saturday evening with his hit song "Yeah." The concert is chock-full of A-list talent, including Katy Perry, Mindless Behavior and members of the cast of the Fox series "Glee."

The concert continues a tradition started at the 2009 inauguration by honoring the nation's military families. It's being hosted by Mrs. Obama and the vice president's wife, Jill Biden, and emceed by Nick Cannon.

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Op-Ed Contributor: Eat Like a Mennonite

ON the second day of my chemical-detox diet, I was very hungry. I’d been eating like a rabbit, all carrots and greens that I’d gathered, barehanded, from the baskets of the farmer’s market, no gloves or plastic bags allowed. I cooked up some quinoa that I bought packaged in paper from the supermarket sometimes known as Whole Paycheck. I was effectively a vegan because I couldn’t find meat or cheese that wasn’t wrapped in plastic, and I didn’t have access to accommodating livestock.

My 7-year-old daughter and I were participating in a pilot study conducted in 2011 by the Silent Spring Institute and the Breast Cancer Fund (a follow-up study was published later that year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives). We had urinated into some glass containers a few weeks earlier, back when we were “normal” Americans, and now we were spending three days trying to reduce our exposure to plastics before supplying our urine again.

We wanted to see what it would take to nudge down our bodies’ levels of a handful of common chemicals with the potential to mimic or disrupt hormones, including phthalates (found in some plastics and added to products like lotions to bind fragrances), triclosan (an antibacterial ingredient in many soaps, toothpastes and cutting boards) and bisphenol A (or BPA, a plastic-hardener and epoxy additive that may affect children’s brain development and that some believe may be linked to breast and prostate cancers).

Manufacturers have phased BPA out of some products, and last year, the Food and Drug Administration outlawed its use in baby bottles and sippy cups. This month Suffolk County, N.Y., banned certain cash register receipts that carry it.

Risks aside, the normal phase was a lot more fun. My daughter and I painted our toenails, took floral-scented bubble baths, ate refried beans out of a can and drank a couple of sodas. Go America! For detox, I became an isolated Anxiety Mom. We scrubbed off the nail polish. I didn’t venture far from home because I couldn’t ride in a car (phthalates waft out of plastic interiors) or shop (because of those store receipts). That turned out to be something of a relief, since I couldn’t wear makeup or deodorant. I lost three pounds. It was practically like living in the 19th century, except for my trusty bicycle helmet, which I wore despite the fact that it is a terrific example of the technology BPA makes possible.

A study published in 2010 found a very effective way to reduce urinary phthalate levels was to live meatless in a Buddhist temple for five days. A study recently published in the journal NeuroToxicology found that pregnant women in Old Order Mennonite communities, which eschew many modern conveniences, had urinary BPA levels one-fourth the national median. Those Mennonites eat more fresh food than the rest of us and make their own dairy products, but they also buy fewer consumer goods, which can be additional sources of BPA. The chemical is found in dental fillings, eyeglass lenses and CDs, among other products.

In lab-animal studies, BPA has been linked to mammary gland tumors, prostate and urethra problems and cardiac irregularities. The Food and Drug Administration maintains that BPA is safe in low levels, although in 2010 it expressed “some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior and prostate gland in fetuses, infants and young children.” And yet, last year’s bottle announcement seemed to be less about protecting infants than about putting confused parents at ease.

If anything, it has had the opposite effect. Parents who were worried about exposing their babies to a hormone-mimicking substance are just as worried about exposing their unborn children to it in the womb, or passing it along to newborns through breast milk. New sippy cups won’t change that.

One thing that could is adopting my extreme detox regime. My original BPA level was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter of urine, putting me in the upper quartile of Americans. (Levels here are, incidentally, twice those of Canada, which began restricting some uses of BPA in 2008.) After my three days of detox, my level dropped to 0.8, for an 84 percent reduction (I was not quite able to out-Mennonite the Mennonites — their everyday level was 0.71). My daughter’s level dropped even lower, to 0.65. That’s my little cave girl. The researchers speculated that perhaps my polycarbonate eyeglasses kept me from shedding more BPA.

In fact it’s surprisingly easy to change our bodies’ BPA chemistry; it just requires a big shift in eating habits and behavior for most of us. The substance passes in and out of the body quickly, but we are fed it in a daily drip.

So is it time to crank up my crank meter and demand that my children step away from the rubber duckie and join a religious sect? No. I like modern life, and I really like those canned refrieds.

Parents have enough to worry about without scrutinizing labels of baby bottles and wearing hazmat gloves to the grocery store. That’s why we should be relieved when the F.D.A. and local governments like Suffolk County help take over this doleful parenting task for us. It’s why we need the government to require testing of commercial chemicals for hormonal effects, and to regulate them in a meaningful way. And it’s why we need manufacturers to design products with safer substances in the first place.

As far as my family is concerned, we can eat only so much quinoa out of a paper bag.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

 An earlier version of this article misstated the level of bisphenol A, a chemical compound used in consumer products, in the writer’s urine before she went on a detoxification diet. It was 5.1 nanograms per milliliter — not millimeter.

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The Boss: New Leaders Inc. C.E.O. on Giving Children a Chance

I AM the youngest of 10 children in my family, and the only one born in the United States. My father was a municipal judge who fled Haiti during the Duvalier regime. He and my mother settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, but could not initially afford to bring over my four brothers and five sisters, who stayed in Haiti with relatives.

Jean S. Desravines is the chief executive of New Leaders Inc. in New York.

AGE 41

FAVORITE PASTIMES Karate and taekwondo

MEMORABLE BOOK "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character," by Paul Tough

Since he did not speak English fluently, my father worked as a janitor and had a second job as a hospital security guard. He later took a third job driving a taxi at night to pay for my tuition at Nazareth Regional High School, a Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn. My parents were determined that I was going to get a good education, and wanted to keep me away from local troubles, which did claim two of my childhood friends.

Working so many jobs overwhelmed my father. He had a heart attack and died at age 59 behind the wheel of his taxi. My mother found it difficult to cope without my father and moved back to Haiti in 1989 with two of my siblings. I thought I would have to leave school because I had no money for tuition, but Nazareth agreed to pay my way.

I wound up sleeping in my car for almost three months, showering at school after my track team’s practice. I also held down two jobs, both in retailing, and one of my sisters and I rented a basement apartment in East Flatbush.

After graduating from high school in 1990, I attended St. Francis College in Brooklyn, on athletic and academic scholarships. I worked first at the New York City Board of Education, where H. Carl McCall was president, then in his office after he became New York State comptroller. I later worked in the office of Ruth Messinger, then the Manhattan borough president.

I broadened my nonprofit organization experience at the Faith Center for Community Development while earning my master’s of public administration at New York University. I married my high school sweetheart, Melissa, and we now have two children.

In 2001, I began to work toward my original goal — improving educational opportunities for children — and joined the city’s Department of Education. I was later recruited under the new administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to help start a program as part of his Children First reforms.

In 2003, I became the Department of Education’s executive director for parent and community engagement, and, two years later, senior counselor to Joel I. Klein, then the school chancellor. He taught me a great deal about leadership and how to change the education system. But I began to realize public education could not be transformed without great principals who function like C.E.O.’s of their schools.

So in 2006 I returned to the nonprofit world, to New Leaders, a national organization founded in 2000 to recruit and develop leaders to turn around low-performing public schools. Initially, I managed city partnerships and expanded our program in areas like New Orleans and Charlotte, N.C.

In 2011, I became C.E.O., and revamped our program to produce even stronger student achievement results, streamlined our costs, diversified funding sources and forged new partnerships. We have an annual budget of $31.5 million, which comes from foundations, businesses, individuals and government grants, and a staff of about 200 people at a dozen locations.

We have a new partnership with Pearson Education to provide greater learning opportunities to public school principals. The goal of these efforts is to have a great principal in each of our nation’s public schools — to make sure that, just as I did, all kids get a chance at success.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

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