A B O U T

Dr. Mit Foley

As an author, Dr. Foley has translated decades of research and practice into tools that move leaders to act. He co-authored the chapter “The Making of a Champion: Cultivating Excellence in Student-Athletes through Transformational Leadership and Grit” in The Coach’s Playbook: Becoming a Transformational Coach & Leader. His newest book, Transforming Urban Schools for Educational Excellence: A Guide to Moving from Vision to Victory (Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2026), is the culmination of nearly three decades in the arena — a field-tested, research-grounded framework for leaders who are ready to stop talking about equity and start delivering it.

Dr. Foley and his wife, Germaine, are proud parents of two sons — a junior at Michigan State University and a senior in high school.

Dr. Mit L. Foley believes that excellence is not a privilege — it is a promise every leader must keep.

That belief has shaped nearly 30 years of work in some of America’s most challenging urban schools. As Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Curriculum, Instruction, and Athletics for Saginaw Public Schools, Dr. Foley has dedicated his career to a single conviction: that ZIP code should never determine destiny.

He has served Saginaw at every level — classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, and district executive — building a track record of transformational change at each stop. Under his leadership, Saginaw Public Schools has expanded Advanced Placement and dual enrollment programs, forged university partnerships, developed state-of-the-art STEM labs, and recruited 29 international certified teachers across Mathematics, Science, Business, Spanish, and Chinese. These are not incremental improvements. They are the kinds of structural shifts that open doors for students who were never supposed to walk through them.

Dr. Foley’s academic foundation is as rigorous as his practice. A proud alumnus of Saginaw Valley State University, he earned his Master’s degree and Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) before completing his Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) at Central Michigan University. His dissertation — Resilience and Academic Achievement: A Narrative Inquiry of Urban, At-Risk, High Achieving African American Male College Students — earned the Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award for its examination of how resilience enables students to achieve excellence despite systemic barriers. That research did not stay on a shelf. It became the intellectual backbone of everything he does.

A recognized voice in education policy and equity, Dr. Foley served on the Michigan Department of Civil Rights Council for Local Government and Education on Equity & Inclusion, where he helped create the Resource Guide to Developing a School Equity Plan — now a statewide template used across Michigan’s K-12 schools. He is an alumnus of both the AASA-USC Urban Superintendents Academy and the AASA National Principal Supervisor Academy (2024) and a Gerstacker Fellowship Cohort 17 Fellow.