Co-Founders and Directors
Priyanka Hazari
Kuntal Hazari
We are proudly affiliated with Acton Academy Austin. Acton Academy was founded in 2009 by Jeff and Laura Sandefer in Austin Texas. This parent run accredited private school model is exploding across the USA, Canada, and Central America. Priyanka and Kuntal Hazari, founders of Acton Academy Fort Worth, chose to open this Acton affiliate in the Fort Worth area to provide a value-based learning environment as an option to the traditional system. At Acton Academy Fort Worth, the hope is that universal human values are not only cultivated at home by a community of close knit families, but they are also supported and nurtured at school. School should not just be about grades and exams, but about finding one's calling and making a real difference in the world.
Priyanka and Kuntal moved to Fort Worth, TX a decade ago, leaving India and practice of dentistry and medicine behind. Kuntal holds a certificate of school management and leadership from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
Advisors
Laura Sandefer
Jeff Sandefer
Laura Sandefer
Laura lived on both US coasts and in between as a child, then settled into Vanderbilt University for her undergraduate studies in the College of Arts and Science. After being awarded the highly competitive Walter Wattles Fellowship at Lloyd’s of London, Laura worked in the aviation insurance industry in New York City. Deciding to follow her calling into the world of education, Laura returned to Nashville and earned her Master of Education at Peabody College. This led her to her work at the Oklahoma Arts Institute, creating fine arts education programs for teachers and talented high school students.
Laura married Jeff Sandefer and is the happy mother of Sam and Charlie and step-mother to Taite. It is the inspiration of these children that led Laura and Jeff to co-found Acton Academy.
Her greatest hero is her mother who was a Master Teacher. Her wisest mentor is her father who sent her off to college with two words of advice: "Be curious".
Jeff Sandefer
Jeff lives a dual life as an entrepreneur and a Socratic Guide. As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16 and went on to found or co-found seven successful businesses.
As a Socratic teacher at the University of Texas, Jeff's students five times voted him the school's Outstanding Teacher and Businessweek named him one of the top Entrepeneurship professors in America. Jeff went on to co-found the Acton School of Business, an MBA program perennially ranked by the Princeton Review among the best in the nation. In 2012 The Economist honored him as one of the top fifteen Business School professors in the world.
Jeff is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he served for over twenty years on the school's governing committees. He was a longtime director of the Philanthropy Roundtable and National Review magazine and one of the youngest members ever elected to the Texas Business Hall of Fame.