J.W. Carpenter began his tenure as the inaugural president of Prosper Birmingham in February 2021. Previously, he led the Birmingham Education Foundation for eight years and prior to that was the inaugural executive director of Teach For America-Alabama, the same organization where he began his career as a classroom teacher in Helena, Arkansas. J.W. also practiced law for nearly four years in Birmingham.

Carpenter serves on the boards of A+ Education Partnership, Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, the Kiwanis Club of Birmingham, and the Alabama Youth Coalition for Equity, and is serving for the fifth year on the United Way of Central Alabama’s campaign committee. He was named Top 40 under 40 in Birmingham in 2010, and is an alumnus of the PARCA Roundtable, Leadership Birmingham, Leadership Alabama, and Leadership UAB. In 2016, Carpenter was selected for a weeklong fellowship in Strategic Nonprofit Management at Harvard by the Alabama Association of Nonprofits and the Birmingham alumni chapter of Harvard Business School. In 2018, Carpenter received a Vulcan Award honoring servant leadership. He is married to Becky and has two children (Jack and Kate) and Ellie the dog. Carpenter earned a B.A. in Political Science from Boston College and J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.