Dr. Wayne D. Lewis Jr. was appointed Interim Commissioner of Education by the Kentucky Board of Education in April 2018, and Commissioner in October 2018. Lewis has served as a faculty member in the Department of Educational Leadership Studies at the University of Kentucky since 2009, earning tenure and promotion to the rank of associate professor in 2015. Prior to his appointment as Commissioner, he most recently served as the executive director of educational policy and programs with the Kentucky Cabinet for Education and Workforce Development. He has more than 15 years of experience in education. His resume includes experience in public school districts in Louisiana and North Carolina, postsecondary institutions, and in state government. He has worked as a classroom teacher, teacher educator, postsecondary faculty member and program administrator at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and as an executive administrator in state government.

Lewis previously served as an appointed advisor to the Kentucky Board of Education, the Education & Workforce Secretary's Designee on Kentucky's Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC), and chair of Kentucky's Charter Schools Advisory Council. His teaching and published research and writing over the last decade has been in the areas of education policy and politics, school-family-community engagement, and school choice, in American and international contexts.