[2][3][4] Polakow-Suransky was born in Witbank, South Africa, where his parents, Valerie Polakow and Leonard Suransky, were anti-apartheid activists.

[2] He spent his senior year conducting an independent study in Durban, South Africa, at the height of the anti-Apartheid movement.

[2][3] In order to be admitted to the school, students had to fail the City's English language assessment and had to be recent immigrants to the United States.

During his tenure as Chief Academic Officer, Polakow-Suransky focused on building schools' capacity to strengthen what Richard Elmore calls the "instructional core," or "the relationship between teachers and students in the presence of content".

In October 2014, he and a professor at the college, Nancy Nager, penned an opinion piece in The New York Times on the importance of meaningful play in pre-K classrooms as a foundation for successful life-long learning.

[14] In May 2015, he was elected to the Board of Directors of PENCIL, an education nonprofit that unites businesses with New York City public schools for the creation of beneficial programs and initiatives.