A lifelong educator on your school board.

A teacher first

I started out in a classroom, teaching sixty middle schoolers at a charter school in New Orleans. That year my students advanced an average of two grade levels. Everything I have done since has been an attempt to make that happen for more kids than one teacher can reach.

Middle school is also the reason I care so much about grades six through eight here. I know what that age is like from the front of the room, not just from the parent side.

Then a national education career

I was the Director and Deputy to the CEO at Chicago Public Schools, where I ran the operational transition of 650 schools to a new instructional calendar and managed the district’s first $12 million personalized learning innovation fund. At TNTP I served on the leadership team of a 400-person organization working across a ten-state footprint serving two million students. At OneGoal I led a department that ran a college access & success program for 13,500 students across six regions.

Most recently I was the Executive Director at Gradient Learning, where I ran a $20 million organization whose flagship national program served more than 50,000 students in over 300 schools.

This is what I mean when I say I bring national experience to our Board. I have spent twenty years watching what works in districts across the country, and just as usefully, what doesn’t.

And an operator

Before all that, I was Chief Operating and Financial Officer of KIPP Austin Public Schools, a $48 million organization that grew from 2,000 students across seven schools to 4,500 across nine while I was there. I owned strategy, finance, operations, special education, compliance, and technology, with six direct reports and more than a hundred indirect reports.

The part of that job most relevant to D64: I led a $75 million tax-exempt bond financing and a $75 million facilities program covering three campuses and 500,000 square feet. I have sat on the other side of a capital program of the same order as our referendum. When this Board asked the administration hard questions about schedule, scope, and cost, I knew which questions were the right ones because I have had to answer them myself.

I’ve also spent five years with McKinsey & Company and I hold an MBA from Harvard Business School. I am not going to pretend a business degree or a consulting background is what makes someone a good board member, but what it gave me is the ability to read a budget quickly, ask the question underneath the question, and tell the difference between a plan and a wish.

Above all else, a D64 parent

When I first ran in 2023, I had a sixth grader at Emerson and a second grader at Carpenter. My oldest has since graduated from D64. My youngest is a sixth grader now. I have watched this district from the parent side for more than a decade. Drop-off line, conferences, conversations with other parents in the hallway. All of it.

Why I ran, and why I’m running again

In 2023 I wrote that I was running because I believed deeply in our schools and our teachers, and hoped to bring an unusual combination of educational and business experience to the Board. Four years later I’d say the same thing, plus one more. We now have a plan worth finishing.