Meet Our Team
Our consultants bring decades of experience in K-12 education, from classroom teaching to district leadership.
Dr. Jamie Martin
Jamie taught in K12 public schools for nearly a decade, with experience ranging across urban, rural, and suburban schools, as well as a wide range of grade levels. Her subject area was English. Since her time in the classroom, Jamie has served as a coach for higher education instructors and a research-practice partner with K12 teachers and leaders. She’s a mom who loves hiking in the summer and jigsaw puzzles in the winter.
Strengths and Expertise
- Climate and culture
- Equity audits
- Community partnerships
- Teacher/staff morale
- Teacher motivation and efficacy
- Organizational Change
- Navigating leadership and staffing changes
- Team building
- Repairing and rebuilding staff relationships
- Overcoming resistance to new curriculum or models of instruction
- Strategic Planning
- Goal alignment
- Timelines
- Stakeholder buy-in
- Educator Development
- Science of Reading/Learning
- Writing
- Project-Based Learning
Dr. Philip “Pete” White
Pete has been working in a variety of roles in education since 2012. Being able to understand what happens from the State and Federal level, all the way down to one-on-one instruction, allows him to have unique insights to inform realistic and sustainable change. From administrative experiences, to teaching pre-service teachers at the college level, to dual credit and AP courses, to expelled and incarcerated youth, Pete’s experience includes the full range of student needs and considerations. With a passion for creating more just systems, Pete’s work centers teachers’ capacity and system sustainability instead of fleeting hot topics. In his free time, he enjoys biking, emo music, science-fiction books, and planning the next adventure with his wife, Emily. Recently, he’s been vulnerable in sharing his takes on movies on Letterboxd.
Strengths and Expertise
- Systems Design & Implementation
- Comprehensive school-wide audit
- Assess staffing, structures and resource alignment
- Improve coherence across curriculum, instruction, assessment, and data
- Observation of classroom/instructional environments
- Instruction & Learning Science
- Professional learning grounded in learning science and cognitive development
- Instructional and cognitive coaching to support implementation of research-based practices
- Instructional models that integrate academic and social-emotional learning
- Equity, Access, & Student Supports
- Equitable policy frameworks to ensure consistent and fair student support
- Design and implementation of alternative education structures and programming
- Systems and program design to support justice-involved youth and re-entry into school environments
- Vertical Coherence
- Vertical mapping of competencies and skills across grade levels
- Operationalization of durable skills and competencies
- Alignment of instructional practices and reporting structures
Dr. Taylor Lawson-Smith
Taylor taught STEM in K12 public schools for over a decade, for a wide range of demographics. Working on state level assessments, being department chair, and coaching high school basketball, has given her the ability to see the scope of education from systemic to student level. She has earned certificates in data visualization and data literacy. Outside of the classroom, Taylor has served as a SME on change management, assessment design, and curriculum implementation. She enjoys building relationships, problem solving, and watching sports.
Strengths and Expertise
- Organizational Change & Continuous Improvement
- Structured change management for initiatives
- Agile implementation frameworks
- Sprint planning, feedback loops, and adaptive improvement cycles
- Leadership facilitation and stakeholder alignment to drive change
- Curriculum, Assessment, & Instructional Systems
- Curriculum design, implementation and standard alignment
- Assessment development
- Psychometric alignment
- Integration of curriculum, assessment, and instructional practices
- Data Systems Analysis & Visualizations
- Data collection systems design
- Data dashboards
- Data literacy
- Facilitation of data-based decision making
- Instructional Coaching & Professional Learning
- Instructional and cognitive coaching
- Redesign of instructional coaching cycles
- Development of observation tools & feedback protocols