Intro

I began my journey as a social entrepreneur ten years ago. For the past decade, I have been fascinated with the power of imagination. I have built world class schools, world class teams, and organizations focused on honoring the aspirations families and their children hold for themselves and their futures. Each venture started with the power of collective imagination, representing the vision and desires of communities across the South and Mid-West.

About Me

I am a Black woman born and raised in Brooklyn, NY with ancestral roots in South Carolina and Barbados. Growing up in NYC public schools, zip codes and test scores were often proxy for “good schools,” but I can attest from personal experience that going to “good schools” often meant learning in psychologically unsafe environments, where teachers and administrators bore no responsibility for the climate and culture within school buildings let alone student outcomes.  Despite this, I graduated in the top 5% of my class with a Regents diploma from a top public high school, earned a full-tuition scholarship to a top research university, and went on to earn an Ivy League law degree.  I excelled despite a school system that was designed to fail Black and Brown, and low-income students many times over. Following a career on Wall Street, I leapt at the chance to launch a school for students that promised and delivered on academic rigor within a nurturing and supportive environment, where faculty and students shared collective responsibility for creating and sustaining a positive and safe learning environment. I brought that vision to Nashville in 2011, where I founded and led a network of high-performing college preparatory public charter schools through the successful launch of the first two campuses. In 2019, I moved to St. Louis to support the bold vision of education entrepreneurs to think even more expansively about how schools can attend to students academic needs and a broader set of holistic outcomes. I have dedicated my professional career to helping educators design and build learning environments that are positive, rigorous, engaging, and supportive of every student finding their purpose and developing the skills, knowledge, and voice to fulfill it. Now, I work as a Senior Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund where I invest in the visions of bold, innovative and diverse leaders who are designing the schools of the future while centering equity and an expanded definition of student success.

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