By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The founding president of a prominent education nonprofit fell to her death Wednesday morning in an apparent suicide, the New York Daily News reported.
Ellen Dempsey, 74, landed in a basement stairwell about 9 a.m. outside the Brevoort Apartments, on Fifth Avenue and East Ninth Street, where she lived on the 15th floor, the News said.
Dempsey was the founder and president of Teachers Network, a Manhattan-based, national non-profit that fosters professional development for schoolteachers, according to her biography on the organization's website.
She first entered the world of education as an English teacher in Chinatown, later working as a guidance counselor at a school in East Harlem and then as an assistant director of curriculum for the city's Board of Education, the biography noted.
Dempsey had been working on a Ford Foundation-sponsored project called "What Keeps Good Teachers in the Classroom" when she died, according to the website.
