Rachel Zabaneh

FOUNDER AND CEO, VERITAS INSTITUTE FOR LEADERSHIP AND INNOVATION

As a Bay Area educational entrepreneur and visionary for over a decade, Dr. Rachel Zabaneh, founder and CEO of Veritas Institute, has inspired education leaders and students across the nation with a revolutionary model of purpose-driven education.

Growing up in San Francisco, Rachel and her family ministered to the needs of the community that surrounded them – including the elderly, urban youth, homeless, disabled, and others marginalized by society. Building on these experiences and guided by the belief that young people are more than a test score, she designed award-winning, pedagogical techniques to help students learn by creating and leading innovative service projects. At Veritas, this is called “education with a purpose.”

Through her doctoral research at Creighton University, and efforts as Founding Director of the Social Entrepreneurship Lab and Caritas Scholars Program, Rachel continues to encourage educators and students alike with the motivational power of connecting a student’s academic work with their future vocation or “calling” in life.

It was Aristotle who famously said, “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.” Whether transforming contemporary educational paradigms or participating in local or global humanitarian efforts, Rachel understands how to design systemic change in communities – through sustainable, replicable, and scalable methods of intervention.

At Veritas Institute for Leadership and Innovation, our objective is to empower every student to 1.) identify their God-given unique gifts and talents, 2.) discover what matters most to them and 3.) make lasting change in their communities and world.