Dr. Ron L. Woodard was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, and is an alumnus of Hillsboro High School. Woodard served as principal at Apollo Middle School for three years, earning distinction as a turnaround principal after significantly improving student achievement outcomes. Under his leadership, Apollo Middle School moved to “Improving” status and boosted its rank from being No. 450 in Tennessee amongst 500+ middle schools to No. 28. Prior to leading Apollo, Woodard served as assistant principal at Maplewood High for one year and assistant principal at Whites Creek High for four years. He began his career as a teacher and coach at Wright Middle School.

Woodard is the former president of the Middle School Athletic Association and founder of D.A.S.H., the Digital Academy for Success in High School at Apollo Middle. Woodard has served as a community advocate for youth and teen violence prevention across the city of Nashville, as well as a district trainer and presenter on numerous occasions on a variety of academic topics including teacher efficacy, school climate and culture building, memory and retention studies, brain-based research, and teacher quality.

Woodard is a 2007–2008 graduate of the Principals’ Leadership Academy of Nashville and a member of the Leadership Nashville class of 2013. He participated in the Principals’ Leadership Development Research Study at Vanderbilt University from 2008–2010 and served as a delegate to participate in the Educational Leadership Learning Exchange in China in 2009, where he spent two weeks in the Guangdong province collaborating with school leaders. Woodard earned a Bachelor of Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, a master’s degree from Tennessee State University, and a doctoral degree from Lipscomb University in 2012.