Van Schoales is the program officer for urban education at the Piton Foundation, a private operating foundation established to develop and implement programs to improve education, expand economic opportunities for families, and strengthen lower-income communities. In his role at the Foundation, Schoales manages a portfolio of projects aimed at improving the quality of education for low-income students in Colorado, a portfolio that includes Get Smart Schools. His primary areas of focus include school system redesign, school accountability, student choice, secondary school improvement and charter schools.

Prior to joining Piton, Schoales was in charge of the Colorado Children’s Campaign’s education initiatives while serving as the Colorado intermediary for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was the founding principal of the first Expeditionary Learning charter school in the nation, The Odyssey School, and has helped establish a number of successful new schools including the Denver School of Science and Technology. Schoales taught high school science for seven years and was a secondary school administrator before assuming the role of founding executive director of the Bay Area Coalition of Essential (now Equitable) Schools.

Schoales received a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a master’s degree in the same from Brown University. He also received a master's degree in education at Stanford University.