A little about me
In 2010, I met a woman who had never sent an email before and a man who had lived here all of his life but only learned English in the last 5 years. In 2011, I met a woman who had never used a computer before, but was eager to learn. In 2013, I met a man who did not know how to use the internet, but was fascinated by how quickly one could uncover answers with a few keystrokes. And by 2013, I knew I wanted to teach adults.
Click here to read my story
Before transitioning into a corporate career, I’d been working as a lead/manager in hospitality for 7 years, I had a Bachelor’s of Technology in Graphic Arts Production Management and I was sure, when all was said and done, I would end up somewhere in the middle of those two. That all changed when I accepted a Data Administrator position at one of NYC’s largest third party provider of Title I educational services. The position was new and relatively undefined; the only thing I knew for certain was that I was responsible for gathering and cleaning data and reporting this information to the NYC Department of Education. It was obvious from the outset that in order to do this, I needed to structure the way we collected data from the teacher level to that of the field supervisors. In initiating and leading this process, I began to realize the scope of the learning deficits adults potentially face.
When I began in 2010, I was introduced to something I never considered – an entire community of people who were dedicated to educating the next generation but ill prepared to do so. We dealt mostly with Yeshivas, or Jewish day schools, which tend to focus more heavily on religious studies than traditional education. Having come from this same cycle, many of our teachers did not have certain fundamental skills necessary to do their jobs. When you consider this on a whole – children who grow into adults who go on to propagate this cycle, the question becomes, what happens when they step outside that circle? What will they do when they need to communicate clearly to students, coworkers, parents and supervisors? If they never learned how to construct arguments or how to put together reports using common technology and modern research methodology, how can their ideas make a lasting impact?
Around the same time I began that job, my husband was laid off. We spent hours searching for resources to teach him new skills in hopes that it would make his resume more attractive to potential employers. We reached out to the Department of Labor but they wouldn’t teach you any new skills to help transition into another field. If you didn’t already know it, then those classes weren’t for you. We searched college websites and anything else we could think of but unless you could pay to enroll in courses or workshops, options were few and far between. Concurrently, I was watching the same struggle plague our teachers. The issue was apparent. It wasn’t just him – there are thousands of people in the same predicament. They were missing essential skills that were free, low cost or rolled into tuition when they were younger but now seemed insurmountable after reaching adulthood and spending years working a full time job.
This culmination of events sparked an idea that has since blossomed into a driving goal. Regardless of where I go or what job title I hold, I am dedicated to facilitating adult education through various mediums including webinars, social outreach and free or low cost classes with the intention to empower individuals to pursue their own personal development.
Education and Certifications
- Certified Scrum Master, Scrum Alliance, exp. 12/2023
- M.Ed., Education and Human Resource Studies, Colorado State University
- B. Tech, Graphic Arts Production Management, NYC College of Technology
Volunteer and Nonprofit
- Founder, Learn. Grow. Expand., 2019
- President, Women’s Employee Resource Group, 2016-2019
- Adult Literacy Tutor, Imani House, 2016-2019
- Education and Training Consultant, Ayiti Now, 2018
Relevant Work
Director, Project Manager, Newsela, 2021 – 2023
- Built the inaugural Project Management as part of the Divisional Project Management Office within the R&D org of a high-growth education technology company; this results-driven and outcome-oriented team was instrumental in delivering large cross-functional product and technology initiatives.
- Implemented new processes, frameworks, and tools that drove an increase in overall delivery rate across R&D, going from <%50 to 78%; in collaboration with divisional leadership further iteratively improved processes to focus scalability and repeatability.
- Led a team of 8 ICs and 1 manager; established individual and team goals, supported by regular feedback cadences, ongoing 1:1 and teamwide coaching, monthly professional development and quarterly career conversations as part of a commitment to continuous learning and improvement
Program Manager/Analyst, Workrise (formerly RigUp), 2020 – 2021
- Developed robust project planning process designed to evaluate project scope, timelines, and outcomes prior to resource commitment; implemented a continuous improvement process to review project status updates and make resource allocation/timeline adjustments as needed
- Led efforts to ingest information from multiple systems into Snowflake in partnership with Data teams; developed reporting to QA new data sources; created executive dashboards in Tableau to provide visibility into field worker training compliance aimed at reducing risk and optimizing spend across the org
Senior Director, Program Operations, SV Academy, 2019 – 2020
- Built out and modeled a continuous improvement framework for program operations, including the automation of operational tasks across the business; evaluated and implemented new systems, including Confluence and JIRA
- Established standardized internal documentation aimed at increasing visibility into program health, creating the foundation for scalable program growth, and reducing miscommunications and delays in obtaining critical information.
- Designed improved data collection processes and tools used to predict cohort growth, as well as model out instructor and mentor staffing on a per cohort basis.
Manager/Director, Consumer Operations, General Assembly, 2016 – 2019
- Developed and drove initiatives to capture, analyze and improve program quality health metrics, including a 19% decrease in withdrawal rates YoY and a global NPS of 40+.
- Managed Consumer Ops HQ staff; matrix managed 3 student-facing orgs (90+ team members) across 22 campuses, servicing 22,000 part-time and full-time students
- Reduced potential quarterly revenue losses by $300k through the design and implementation of new customer engagement and retention initiatives
- Introduced program management best practices, change management initiatives, and processes for socializing new/key product updates that resulted in $2 mil revenue gain
- Revamped process for triaging urgent customer issues and provided 1:1 coaching and detailed recommendations for improvement, resulting in 10% reduction in churn
- Identified opportunities for IC training and development across the student facing orgs Efforts led to a 2-year retention rate of 80% and an employee NPS of 58