Harvard University

Hunter College

John Jay College (CUNY)

Morehouse College

Media and Tech Executive l Disruptor for Social Good

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

SMASH

Chief Executive Officer (Career Catalyst)

As a SecondMuse Headstream Advisor, I mentor innovators from the Headstream Accelerator Program. This mentorship  includes participation in monthly board meetings as well as additional meetings with the innovators as requested.

The Headstream Accelerator program provides support for a community of Innovators by increasing market-based resources to allow them to grow sustainable, profitable businesses, while increasing access to different forms of capital & opportunities for sales channels.

SecondMuse

Advisor

I led a participatory philanthropic initiative aimed at reducing bias in investment selection while creating a more inclusive process and engagement strategy for it's largest investment category, its Education Portfolio. My work particularly focused on increasing community stakeholder (i.e. parents and young people) input to ensure grantee partners continue delivering impact most aligned with the needs of the communities they served. I created an ecosystem of participatory resources to help scale practices across the sector.

New Profit

Doctoral Resident

Supported course professor during biweekly lectures while teaching my own 75-minute weekly discussion sections and creating assignments for undergraduate students, aimed at increasing their understanding of the powerful two-way relationship between American society and the American education system by analyzing the role of schools as social, political, economic, legal, and cultural institutions.

Using this multi-directional relationship as a frame for analysis, this course considered some of the major dilemmas that have defined American K-12 education throughout history and up to the present.

Teaching Fellow , GENED:1076 Equity and Excellence in K-12 American Schools

I co-led HIVE (Harvard GSE Innovation & Ventures in Education) in uniting students and alumni from across Harvard University around education innovation, providing access to resources, mentors, networks, workshops, and competitions to develop impactful solutions to worldwide education problems.

As HIVE Director, I worked with my counterpart to set the vision for the year, manage the budget, and form a leadership team cabinet to oversee event logistics, communications/marketing, and volunteer recruitment organization. I coordinated and oversaw all aspects of the Education Innovation Pitch Competition, an annual culminating event. Moreover, my codirector and I collaborated to plan and lead ongoing and discrete events to promote education entrepreneurship at HGSE while managing relationships with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at the Innovation Labs (iLab).

As a HIVE Director, I leveraged my concurrent position as an Education Innovation Fellow at HILT to liaise between the two programs with the goal of creating an education innovation ecosystem. I accomplished this goal by establishing broader partnerships and actively working to make connections between students and resources at Harvard and beyond, all while collecting and analyzing data on student outcomes for this cross-school pilot.

Harvard GSE Innovation & Ventures in Education (HIVE)

Director

As part of a collaborative cross-school team at Harvard Initiative for Teaching and Learning (HILT), code named: Operation Impact, I served as a navigator and coach to student education innovation teams from across Harvard and MIT. As part of a 9-member team that managed 4 independent funding rounds with awards to over 150 social ventures, I personally advised a caseload of dozens of social entrepreneurs through strategy and operational advising. I helped social entrepreneurs with early-stage ideas shape their ideas and develop an innovation mindset while sharing my firsthand experience with educational startups.

As an Innovation Fellow, I leveraged my concurrent position as Director of Harvard Innovation and Ventures in Education (HIVE) to actively foster connections between both programs to increase resource capacity for students while at Harvard and beyond, while collecting and analyzing data on student outcomes for this cross-school pilot. As part of this pilot program, I also provided strategic guidance for the cross-school education innovation efforts, developed resources, ideas, and tools to help build a vibrant university-wide education innovation ecosystem at Harvard culminating in an annual pitch competition.

Operation Impact is a Harvard and MIT collaboration that is facilitated by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching, which is part of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Office at Harvard. In 2018, HILT designed a program specifically for student innovation in education in close collaboration with the Social Innovation and Change Initiative (HKS), the iLabs, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and HBS Social Enterprise Initiative.

Education Innovation Fellow and Coach

The Venture Program combines a supportive community with key resources for full-time Harvard students who are actively building an idea into a venture. From workshops to one-on-one advising, you’ll gain access to opportunities tailored to your stage and venture. The Venture Program has two tracks: Start It for teams bringing a new idea into the world, and Build It for ventures who have real world demand and are ready to step on the gas!

Harvard Innovation Labs

Felllow, Venture Incubation Program

We are an education technology nonprofit that believes that the relationship between teacher and student is sacred. We are a simulation lab harnessing the power of virtual reality to close decision-making skills gaps for both education practitioners and students. We engage users through dynamic story arc simulations to improve empathetic and relational outcomes.

VRsatility

Co-Founder

In addition to facilitating +100 communities of practice and organizing for action events for families, practitioners, and community members over a 2-year span,  I supervised and professionally developed a team of family advocates to support families while cultivating public-private partnerships and identify innovative ways to collaborate for services for children and families in Oakland. In this role, I oversaw all community initiatives for East Bay Asian Youth Center and Garfield Elementary School including Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS), family and community engagement and organizing efforts in collaboration with Oakland Mayor's Office, OUSD Oakland Unified School District, City of Oakland Department of Transit, and City of Oakland Police Department.

East Bay Asian Youth Center (EBAYC)

Managing Director

Lead all family and community engagement  activities across 4 priority areas ( reducing chronic absence, increasing access to health and wellness, coordination of student services (COST) and increasing community partnerships) between Oakland Unified School District, community partners and the largest elementary school in Oakland. Sourced, managed, and measured the impact of all community partnerships. I created, and implemented workshops for staff, quarterly programming for community partners, and monthly family and community engagement meetings across 5 respective affinity groups. I coordinated and ran large scale events at the school and district level with a focus on resource equity, educational equity and social justice and safety. Finally, I garnered all of the data accumulated through my work to create quarterly impact reports which informed the ongoing  strategy for my community as well as the overall district strategy.

Oakland Unified School District

Program Manager, Community Schools

I managed the project scope and work plan deliverables for ~ 100 partners spanning ~ 50 agencies within the collective impact collaborative. I also managed the program budget and monitored funds from partner organizations. This citywide initiative allowed me to develop and maintain sustained relationships with prospective community partners in Oakland. In addition to managing the overall budget, I also created and managed a micro-grant process that allowed local community based organizations to apply for small to moderate sums of money to support their programmatic needs. I supported leadership teams with strategy and implementation processes while providing the initial design of a user-friendly and visually appealing website from layout to function for improved internal and external communications and clear navigation for the programs partners.

Oakland Public Education Fund

Project Manager, Starting Smart and Strong Initiative

I managed a portfolio of large local Bay Area funders that supported Oakland public schools and youth development programs by tracking and identifying the allocation and impact of their investments over a 7-year horizon. During this time I also created a business plan and pitch proposal for an Oakland Public Education Volunteer Program that would be offloaded from Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and managed by the Oakland Ed Fund. The proposal was accepted by OUSD and in the subsequent year went on to aggressively scale funding and programmatic supports to all of Oakland's K-12 schools, serving approximately 45,000 students.

Financial Data Analyst- Education Pioneers Graduate Fellow

While working at BMGF as an intern, I developed optimization, cost, and scenario planning models to determine key financial considerations on investment opportunities for increased diversity recruitment and retention in education for the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, I evaluated systemic and sustainable ways to increase recruitment and retention of educators of color and devised strategies and tactics to diversify Washington’s public school system educator workforce. My work informed the U.S. Programs Education Pathways Teams' funding strategy and strategic plan.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Intern, Education Pathways

Co-lead a 6 member team through the creation and implementation of a county-wide data gathering strategy to aid educators in quantifying and producing improved data on student achievement. To achieve programmatic goals, I analyzed quantitative and qualitative data streams to identify optimization opportunities in schools, and proposed strategic solutions which lead to a 25% reduction in out-of-
school disciplinary referrals as this was an ongoing equity issue. In addition, I conducted quarterly academic and behavioral best practices workshops with educational leadership stakeholders to demonstrate remedial curriculum strategies to address learning needs of students that were receiving special education services.

Hassan Brown

Hassan Brown