PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island native will lead Teach for America when the national program launches here in the fall.

Heather Tow-Yick, 34, grew up in Providence and graduated from Moses Brown School and Brown University. She will serve as the state executive director for the Teach for America program, which selects top recent college graduates and places them in urban and rural schools that serve low-income and minority students.

Teach for America will send 20 first-year teachers to Providence schools and another 10 to a regional charter school, Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley.

Tow-Yick is a member of the Tow family, which for decades owned several well-known local restaurants, including Ming Garden in downtown Providence and the Great House in Warwick.

“I’m really excited,” said Tow-Yick, who has worked for Teach for America on and off since she graduated from college. “It allows me to come back to my home state and work in a community that I care very deeply about.”

After Brown, Tow-Yick taught U.S. history to middle school students in the South Bronx through Teach for America, an experience she says changed her life.

“I saw what was possible for kids in terms of academic achievement,” she said. “And that experience has guided every single career choice I’ve made.”

In some ways, Tow-Yick is representative of many Teach for America alumni. The organization says that two-thirds of its 17,000 alumni remain involved in some aspect of education after their two-year commitment ends, working as teachers, principals, administrators or in the realm of policy, government and educational nonprofit groups.

After she left the classroom, Tow-Yick worked for the national TFA organization and later joined the leadership team of New York School Chancellor Joel Klein. She enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and received her MBA in 2007.

“[Business school] gave me insight about how business leaders effect change in their own industry,” she said, “and how they could be leveraged in the efforts to achieve education reforms.”

Tow-Yick worked for a nonprofit school leadership organization before returning to Teach for America.

“I think the opportunity for education reform and change already exists in Rhode Island, through the efforts of the new commissioner and the Rhode Island Foundation and many business and political leaders,” Tow-Yick said. “And I also think [TFA] can provide an opportunity for college graduates to stay in Rhode Island or give an opportunity to kids who grew up here and moved away to potentially come home to work in education. That can help stop some of the brain drain in the state.”

Tow-Yick will work with an assistant and two program directors who will oversee the 30 new teachers, visiting them in their classrooms at least four times a year and providing feedback and support.

Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, who has made improving teacher quality her top priority since taking her post in July, worked to lure the alternative teacher training program to Rhode Island. She says Teach for America — with its record of helping low-income and minority students succeed — is just one tool she plans to use to make significant changes.

The 20-year-old nonprofit organization has 7,300 teachers working in 35 urban and rural school districts nationwide. After the Rhode Island Foundation led a campaign to raise $2.7 million locally — a goal reached in just six weeks — Teach for America made a three-year commitment to Rhode Island. Each year, the program will add 30 new recruits.

The fundraising campaign included donations from 30 wealthy Rhode Islanders plus $300,000 from the foundation and will pay for training and support for the new teachers over the three-year period, as well as the salaries of Tow-Yick and her staff.

A news conference officially announcing the program’s launch in Rhode Island is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at the Rhode Island Foundation.

The highly selective program recruits candidates at 450 colleges and universities, including Brown University, Providence College and the University of Rhode Island. In Rhode Island, it will give priority to graduates of those institutions as well as Rhode Islanders who graduate from out-of-state colleges and want to teach in Rhode Island.

Unlike traditional teacher preparation programs that last several years, TFA’s training is accelerated.

The selected recruits will receive five weeks of intense training in Philadelphia, working in urban summer school programs, and will undergo two more weeks of training in Rhode Island before schools open. All will be certified by the state and will be paid by the district or charter school where they work. The new teachers will receive the same salary as other first-year teachers — about $35,000 a year at Democracy Prep Blackstone Valley and $36,641 a year in Providence.

The 20 recruits entering Providence schools will help the district fill high-need areas such as math, science and special education, said Supt. Tom Brady, who worked with Teach for America teachers in previous jobs in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

jjordan@projo.com