A few threads shape my work:

I am a writer, facilitator, and strategic advisor - grounded in my experiences as a teacher and education entrepreneur. I’m currently spending a year traveling to the Global South’s bright spots for education, writing a book that profiles leaders creating systems change in Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. For Global School Leaders, I am researching how non-state actors support governments for education systems change in four of those countries and Malaysia.

Based on the belief that we are stronger working together than struggling in isolation, I’ve helped launch a few networks for proximate education leaders to learn and generate collective action. I co-founded Metis (which has trained 130 Kenyans to innovate across government, public and private schools, nonprofits, and edtech). I co-created the South-South Programme, which equips leaders from Pakistan and Kenya to start education coalitions inspired by Brazil. I designed a Pan-African education conference for ALforEducation and advised the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to enable more African-led FLN organizations. I have also supported clients such as Imaginable Futures, Lemann Center for Leadership & Equity in Education, ZiziAfrique, and Anzisha Education Accelerator.

Working alongside many leaders made me see that they are often told to learn from Global North contexts very different from their own, such as Finland, Singapore, and Canada. They need more practical tools that build on the inspiring education work already happening in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. So I write and create resources on topics like fundraising, new models for systems change from philanthropy or government, and stories of success from Global South contexts. I write a newsletter, EdWell, and I share jobs, funding opportunities, and insights on LinkedIn.

I have also produced academic research on topics like how teacher unions and corruption shaped the failure of reforms in South African township schools, which school leadership practices create stronger learning outcomes, and toolkits for how to build a successful coalition for education reform, using case studies from India and Brazil. I have been published by publications such as New Education Story and BRIGHT Magazine, and have spoken at forums like the Future of Learning Unconference in India.

My work has received awards and funding from a Fulbright Fellowship, Wesleyan University, and University of Oxford. HundrED named Metis one of the top 100 education innovations in the world.

I am currently a board member for Metis and the Rockdale Foundation (which supports local organizations training teachers in Sierra Leone), and was previously a board member for Moringa School.

A few moments that shaped my story:

Young and naive, I went on a program that sent American volunteers to teach and run community projects in rural Panama. This taught me how traditional models of outsider-led development are completely flawed - and made me want to learn more about models that support local leaders to create the change they seek.

My students in Coclé, Panama, 2007

To learn about movement-building and community organizing, I became an organizer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. And I went to learn from Saath, one of India’s most successful community-based organizations leading large-scale change since 1989 (saath means ‘together’ or ‘collective’ in Gujarati). I interned with their team that uses documentary screenings in informal settlements as tools for organizing on issues like housing, livelihoods, and domestic violence.

I also kept learning about collective action. I grew up studying the civil rights movement in my hometown of Atlanta, the movement’s birthplace. I interned in India to learn about the independence campaign and studied abroad in South Africa to learn about the anti-apartheid struggle. At university and graduate school, I gained degrees in politics; I researched teacher unions at Wesleyan and focused on social movements and coalition-building at Oxford.

At work in an Obama campaign office, 2008

A documentary produced by my colleagues in India, 2009

I was also shaped by my family, which has many ties to education. My mother was on the school board for Atlanta’s government schools, and she funds local teacher training organizations in Sierra Leone. From her, I got a front-row view to the difficult work of systems change.

In addition, my father invests in education companies and low-cost schools in India, while his father renovated schools in Costa Rica and sponsored over 2,000 youth to attend college; my great-grandfather built schools across Georgia. My mother’s father helped reform state policies to expand education access for students with special needs. Both of my grandmothers and my great-grandmother were teachers.

These examples helped me realize how education is a lever to equip learners with skills to strengthen their communities. I experienced the power of progressive education when I attended CITYterm, a life-changing experiential learning program in New York City. And when I lived in South Africa, I spent a lot of time interviewing and observing principals and teachers, to understand their realities.

A principal’s office in Umlazi township, 2011

Teacher trained by EducAid, a partner of Rockdale Foundation

But I knew that to better understand education, I needed to be a teacher. As an intern for Educate! in Uganda, I interviewed principals, and I taught at African Leadership Academy in South Africa. With students from over 35 African countries in my classroom, I experienced firsthand what it takes to design and teach an innovative curriculum.

I was also lucky to learn directly from education entrepreneurs. Before teaching, I was an assistant to an ALA Co-Founder - an unexpected apprenticeship in how to launch and lead an education nonprofit. To write a case study for ALA, I shadowed Joseph Munyambanza, an ALA alumni who started education programs in DRC and a refugee camp in Uganda - which taught me even more about what it is like to be an education entrepreneur from the Global South.

Students in my Entrepreneurial Leadership class, 2015

Hanging out with Educate! scholars in Uganda, 2011

These experiences made me realize that my role as a White American is to amplify and support local leaders to transform their own systems. After working in South Africa for four years, I moved to Kenya on a Fulbright Fellowship. I interviewed entrepreneurs, funders, and school leaders in Nairobi and wrote about how the city is an exciting hub for education innovation. But I also started to see the pervasive influence of race. I saw how leaders from the Global South (primarily Black, Latinx, or South Asian) receive less support and funding than education entrepreneurs from the US and Europe (primarily White).

Rebecca Ume Crook and I decided to try and shift this complex dynamic, so we co-founded Metis (metis means practical knowledge from lived experience in Greek). The collective equips over 130 proximate leaders with the technical support and funding they need to create change across Kenya’s education system - in public and private schools, edtech, nonprofits, and government policy. After serving as founding ED, I now support as a board member. Being part of the Metis journey taught me that it is difficult and takes many years to create meaningful change, but collective leadership is possible!

Cohort 2 Metis Fellows at a retreat, 2019

Metis Fellows learning from Bridge Academies, 2017