John Sands is Director of Learning and Impact at the John S. and James Knight Foundation. He joined Knight Foundation in 2019, with a background is in higher education, and he brings experience in development and enrollment management from the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), where he drove initiatives around market research, strategic planning and marketing/communications. In Penn’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Sands developed and led the implementation of committee-based evaluation, an innovative student application review model that has since been adopted by dozens of colleges and universities nationwide. Following his time at Penn, Sands was chief of staff and special assistant to the president at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has consulted to clients in higher education as well as to Knight Foundation. A native of east Tennessee, Sands studied music theory and composition at Vanderbilt University and holds a doctorate in the history and theory of architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Philadelphia.