Jump to: Partner Leadership | Equity Specialists
MAEC Central Office
Susan Shaffer
Executive Director
President, MAEC
Susan has been a nationally recognized expert for more than four decades. Her transformational work in public schools has centered on the development of comprehensive technical assistance for system wide change, training on educational equity and culturally responsive pedagogy and practice, school climate and culture, family, school, and community engagement, and multicultural gender-related issues. Currently, Ms. Shaffer is the Executive Director of MAEC’s Center for Education Equity. She also represents MAEC as a partner with the Chief State School Officers to create a State Consortium on Family Engagement, developing a Birth to Age 21 Family Engagement Framework for 18 states. Ms. Shaffer has published extensively on gender equity, family engagement, civil rights, multicultural education, and disability. Her publications include a co-edited journal, Equity-Centered Capacity Building: Essential Approaches for Excellence & Sustainable School System Transformation, and co-authored book, How to Connect with your iTeen: A Parenting Road Map.
Ms. Shaffer serves on several boards, including the National Association of Family, School and Community Engagement since 2013, (co-founder) and the Bowie State University School of Education Board of Directors from 2012 to 2019 as well as the Harmony Through Education Board of Directors since 2006. Her other equity work includes Continuous Improvement for Equity and as a national member of the Model Design and Initiation program with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; with the Collaborative Action for Family Engagement (CAFÉ) State Family Engagement Center since 2019; as the Co-Chair of the Maryland Family Engagement Framework Committee; a member of the Equity-Centered Capacity Building Network since 2014; she has been a member of the Committee of Title I Practitioners for the Maryland State Department of Education since 2010; and she is a member of the Maryland Superintendent’s Family Engagement Advisory Council. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her service, leadership, and significant contribution to curricular materials on women. She holds a B.A. in History and M.A. in education from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Nyla Bell
Senior Education Equity Specialist
Nyla is a native Philadelphian and fourth generation Black educator with over 20 years of experience working at the intersections of equity, social justice, and public education. Nyla has devoted her life and career to educational justice as an adult educator, technical assistance provider, advocate, English teacher, scholar and youth organizer. Nyla’s more recent experiences working to advance equity and justice in education include teaching graduate courses on race and critical pedagogy to pre-service teachers; developing social justice curricula as a classroom teacher; and providing professional development on culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy to in-service teachers. Nyla earliest experiences include testifying before Philadelphia’s superintendent on the poor condition of textbooks and serving as editor of a newsletter that covered topics like racial disproportionality in AP and honors classes.
In response to systemic racial inequities and hate incidents, Nyla’s early experiences also include co-leading the work of establishing Penn State University’s first and only Africana Research Center and organizing a first of its kind Black Women Studies conference. With strong foundational knowledge on the intersections of racial, economic, and gender inequality, and on the culture and politics of public schooling, Nyla continues her ed justice work at MAEC by providing consultation, training, evaluation services, and technical assistance to educators and policy-makers in schools, districts, and state departments of education on a wide range of the most salient issues related to equity in schooling. Nyla is an alumna of, and board member with the Philadelphia Student Union, and is also longtime member of the Free Minds, Free People (FMFP) Leadership Committee. Nyla holds a Masters of Science in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor of Philosophy degree with an interdisciplinary focus on social inequality, and with honors in African and African American Studies and Women’s Studies, from Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
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Kate Farbry
Dir of Communications and Technology
Kate Farbry has over 20 years of experience working in digital communications for non-profit organizations, understanding the multifaceted needs of diverse audiences with varying capabilities and access. In her current role, Ms. Farbry develops and executes MAEC’s communication strategy and manages dissemination channels, including the website, email campaigns, and social media. With a focus on maximizing engagement and user experience design, Ms. Farbry’s background is in front and back-end website development and branding, print publication production, and email outreach.
Most recently, Ms. Farbry helped develop MAEC’s universal services in response to COVID-19. When schools moved to virtual learning in 2020, MAEC produced a series of webinars, newsletters, and web-based resources, to assist educators and families as they transitioned to at-home learning. Ms. Farbry also serves as the project manager for the CI4E Resource Hub, a project funded by the Gates Foundation, to increase the usability of and engagement around Continuous Improvement for Equity tools.
Prior to joining MAEC, Ms. Farbry served as the website and outreach specialist for a national advocacy nonprofit and as an independent consultant developing websites and marketing materials. She holds a B.A. in Writing from the University of Evansville, IN
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Kathleen Pulupa
Communications & Administrative Coordinator
Kathleen has over 10 years of experience working with communications in both the profit and non-profit sectors. Kathleen currently is MAEC’s communications and administrative coordinator and assists the CEO and works with the Associate Director of Communications in managing the websites, social media, e-newsletters, and designs layouts for print publications. Prior to joining MAEC, she worked in the travel industry and as a communications consultant. She earned her degree in Communications at Marymount University, VA and graduate degree in Public Communications at American University, DC.
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Karmen Rouland, Ph.D.
Assoc. Dir of Technical Assistance & Training
Karmen Rouland, PhD serves as the Director of Programs and Delivery at MAEC. In this role, she provides leadership, supervision, oversight, and management of MAEC’s programs and services, as well as, collaborating with senior leadership to develop future business for MAEC. Karmen also manages technical assistance and training services to state departments of education, school districts, and schools on civil rights and educational equity issues. Specifically, she provides training on issues related to cultural competence, family engagement, equitable access to education, implicit bias, privilege, and structural inequality. Karmen has published several peer-reviewed journal articles and technical papers on issues related to family engagement and equity. Prior to joining MAEC, Karmen worked at the intersection of education policy and data at the District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
Karmen has extensive experience in educational research and youth development programs. Karmen also served as School Liaison for the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) and as a Co-Site Director for It’s Great to Be a Girl Mentoring Program. Before working for the government of the District of Columbia, Karmen worked at Howard University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow studying the role of HBCUs in diversifying the K-12 teacher pipeline. She has also provided research consultation for several non-profit organizations and school districts.
For more than 15 years, Karmen has taught undergraduate and graduate-level education courses for pre-service and in-service teachers at Howard University, George Washington University, the University of Michigan, and Washington Adventist University. She graduated summa cum laude from Howard University in Washington, DC with a B.S. in psychology. She received her Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Combined Program in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan. Karmen is a 2021 Leadership Montgomery CORE participant, a board member of Girls Prep, Inc and a Co-Troop Leader with her daughter’s Girl Scout troop.
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Phoebe Schlanger
Publisher
Phoebe has over 20 years experience as a lawyer, writer, editor, and budget manager. At MAEC, she divides her time between finance and editing. Under finance, she manages contracts, grants, budgets, A/P and A/R. She writes and edits publications, including grant proposals. Prior to joining MAEC, she was an attorney and a managing editor. Phoebe has served on several non-profit boards, and is currently the President of the Board of the non-profit Kids’ Corner Day Care Center in Washington, D.C. Phoebe has a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law.
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Kasia Razynska
Associate Director of Evaluation and Continuous Improvement
Kasia Razynska was born in Gdansk, Poland. She graduated from The Harvard Graduate School Of Education with a degree in International Education Policy with a focus on quantitative research methods. She has 18 years of experience in the education sector and 7 years of continuous experience working on projects requiring evaluation, research design, statistical programming and data management. Prior to joining MAEC she worked for ICF where she served on the internal evaluation team for the Capacity Building Center for States funded through the Children’s Bureau. She is also played an integral role with the Regional Education Laboratory Mid-Atlantic (REL MA). As the REL MA Maryland State Coordinator, she used her understanding education policy and knowledge of the state to ensure that Maryland’s needs are well represented in REL activities. In her role as Coordinator of the REL Mid-Atlantic Longitudinal Data Use Research Alliance (LDURA), she advised stakeholders on implementing new data processes. She has also worked with the Puerto Rico Department of Education on numerous research and technical assistance projects and is fluent in Spanish. In her spare time Kasia teaches English to kids in China through an internet platform. Having moved to the U.S. from Poland at the age of 14, she is deeply passionate about ensuring access to education for all children, especially English Learners and immigrants.
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Daryl Williams
Senior Education Equity Specialist, CEE
Daryl Williams is a Senior Education Equity Specialist at MAEC, providing technical assistance and professional development training to schools and school districts to ensure that students are given access to an equitable education. As a former Associate Superintendent for Student Services, Dr. Williams provides support to superintendents and executive leadership teams in developing equity assistance plans as part of the district’s strategic work. His work included training teachers and educators on strategies to increase diversity in talented and gifted programs in Henrico County (VA) Public Schools. He has collaborated with the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC), a partnership between Richmond-area public school districts and Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Williams is also the Chair and Doctoral Instructor in the College of Doctoral Studies at the University of Phoenix.
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Partner Leadership
Vanessa Coleman, Ph.D.
Principal TA Consultant
American Institutes for Research (AIR)
Vanessa Coleman is a principal technical assistance consultant at AIR. Dr. Coleman currently manages AIR’s investment project, Say Yes to Education, in both Syracuse and Buffalo, New York. With a particular focus on multi-stakeholder education reform initiatives, Dr. Coleman also serves on a wide variety of hands-on technical assistance district-wide projects.
Prior to AIR, Dr. Coleman owned and operated a consulting firm focused on facilitating leadership through effective and sustainable change management. Emphasizing innovation, scaling change, and capacity building for education-focused entities, she has worked with a range of clients, from local government entities to large-scale non-for profits. She also has extensive not-for-profit leadership experience and served as executive director of a national comprehensive school reform think tank and network, the Coalition of Essential Schools. Prior to that, Dr. Coleman served as Executive Director of Summerbridge National (now the Breakthrough Collaborative), an international youth development program focused on academic achievement.
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Peter Cookson, Ph.D.
Principal Researcher
American Institutes for Research (AIR)
Peter W. Cookson, Jr. co-leads LPI’s Equitable Resources and Access team and provides leadership for several equity initiatives. In addition to teaching sociology at Georgetown University, he co-leads the National Poverty Study, a joint research project of Stanford University, John Hopkins University, and the American Institutes for Research. Cookson began his career as a case worker in New York City and as a teacher in rural Massachusetts. Most recently, he was Managing Director of the think tank Education Sector and founded The Equity Project at the American Institutes for Research. He is the author of 16 books and numerous articles on education and inequality, social stratification, school choice, and 21st century education.
Cookson has a Ph.D. in the Sociology of Education from New York University, an M.A. in American History from New York University, an M.A.R. from the Yale Divinity School, and a B.A. in History from New York University.
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Susan Mundry
Director
WestEd’s Learning Innovations Program
Susan Mundry is Director of the Learning Innovations program and Subcontract Director of the Regional Educational Laboratory-Northeast & Islands and the Northeast Regional Comprehensive Center.
She also leads evaluations of Intel Mathematics and of a Math-Science Partnership at Penn State University.
For over a decade, Mundry directed the National Academy for Science and Mathematics Education Leadership.
She also consulted on the design and implementation of leadership academies for the states of Texas, Maine, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Illinois and in Puerto Rico. Based on this work, she coauthored the award-winning Leading Every Day: 124 Actions for Effective Leadership, now in its third edition. The book was named a Learning Forward Book of the Year.
As Senior Research Associate for the National Institute for Science Education, Mundry coauthored the best-selling book, Designing Effective Professional Development for Teachers of Science and Mathematics, as well as policy briefs and professional development guides.
She also coauthored the toolkit, Teachers as Learners, a videotape collection of 18 professional development programs, and was an author of The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students.
Prior to joining WestEd, Mundry was Associate Director at The NETWORK, Inc., a research and development organization focused on school improvement. There, she managed the work of the National Center for Improving Science Education and the Center for Effective Communication, and developed Making Change for School Improvement, a simulation game that enhances leaders' ability to lead change efforts.
Mundry received a BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an EdM from Boston University.
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Equity Specialists
Velma Cobb Ed.D.
Executive Director
Lander Center, Touro College
Velma is CEE’s State Coordinator for New York, New Jersey and the Virgin Islands, based at Touro College in New York. Velma was the former Director of the Touro College Region II Equity Assistance Center and served as Vice President of Education and Youth at the National Urban League; Deputy Director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF); Senior Research Associate with the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools, and Teaching (NCREST); and the Director of Teacher Education for the Massachusetts Department of Education (MDOE). Cobb is a certified leadership coach; trained Leadership Circle Profile and Culture Survey practitioner; and a licensed Bigger Game trainer. She works directly on projects involving cultural proficiency, school climate, disproportionality, parent engagement, and socioeconomic diversity. Velma holds a BS from Brandeis University, M.Ed. from Harvard University, and Ed.D from Columbia University’s Teachers College.
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Pamela Harris
Senior Consultant
MAEC
Pamela has over 43 years of experience in public education as an education equity leader. The core values reflected in her practice center on the academic, emotional, and socio-cultural interests of diverse learners and marginalized populations, K-adult. Her commitment is demonstrated most in her capacity building work with educators who work in service to these populations. Her years of service include leadership roles held in school improvement and professional development; mediation/conflict analysis and resolution; facilitation of district-wide transformation and change; oversight of district-wide equity assurance compliance and programs; graduate level instruction on topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. In her current role as CEE’s Senior Consultant, program work focuses on differentiated approaches to advancing culturally responsive and sustaining, systemic leadership through the lens of educational equity. Pamela holds a B.A. in French and an M.Ed. in Special Education from the American University; and an Advanced Graduate Specialist Certification (A.G.S.) in Professional Development & Urban Education from University of Maryland, College Park.
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Terry Hofer, Ed.D.
Director
NY School and District Services, WestEd’s Learning Innovations Program
Terry Hofer is Director of New York School & District Services in the Learning Innovations program at WestEd. Hofer engages with school and district leaders to develop a customized set of research-based activities to be delivered by WestEd team members with carefully matched expertise.
In various roles at WestEd, Hofer has provided leadership coaching and school transformation support to numerous School Improvement Grant schools. Evidence of impact has been noted on schools exiting priority school status, meeting “demonstrable indicators,” and increasing leading indicators tracked using the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning.
Hofer also provides technical assistance to two federally funded centers — the Mid-Atlantic Comprehensive Center and the Center on Education Equity.
Hofer relates well to clients in all settings, having previously served in rural, suburban, and urban public school districts in roles including elementary and middle school teacher, elementary principal, and district-level administrator. At each level, Hofer engaged committed and diverse teams to tackle complex challenges. At the district level, this included efforts to maximize impact of $30+ million in annual federal grant funds, operationalizing a districtwide socioeconomic integration campaign, opening two new college prep high school options for families and students, and establishing three parent information and student registration centers.
Prior to joining WestEd, Hofer was Senior Vice President of Administration & Accountability for an education management organization offering a portfolio of services including charter schools, private schools, school turnaround support, school reviews, professional development, parent engagement, and supplemental education services.
Hofer received an EdD in executive leadership from St. John Fisher College.
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Tery Medina
Consultant
Tery is a freelance consultant and educator with 30+ years of experience. She holds an M.A.Ed. degree in Diagnostic Teaching with a minor in Bilingual Education, and an M.A.Ed. in Administration and Supervision with a minor in TESOL. Ms. Medina has a wide range of experience as a teacher (specifically with Learning Disabled, Gifted, Pre-K, Elementary and Adult ESOL students) and as an adjunct instructor (teaching ESL Methodology, Curriculum Development, Bilingualism, Cross-Cultural Issues, and English). She has delivered training and technical assistance to numerous State Departments of Education and other professional groups in the areas of Diversity and Cross-cultural Education. She is also the former Associate Director for the Southeastern Equity Center. Tery came to the U.S. as a Cuban refugee and devotes much of her professional life building bridges across cultural differences towards mutual respect and understanding.
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Michelle Nutter
Safe and Supportive Schools Manager
Center for Safe Schools
Michelle Nutter, a Pennsylvania-certified teacher, is the Safe and Supportive Schools Manager for the Center for Safe Schools. Prior to joining the Safe Schools Team in 2005, she was a civil rights investigator with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. During her 10 years with that office, she worked extensively with schools, communities and law enforcement departments to raise awareness and provide effective interventions related to organized hate groups and hate crimes, school-based harassment, bullying prevention, racial tension, prejudice reduction, diversity, gangs, terrorism awareness and First Amendment issues. In addition to her other duties with the Center for Safe Schools, Nutter is the Pennsylvania coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center, one of 10 regional equity assistance center funded by the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. She is a certified Olweus Bullying Prevention Program trainer and provides bullying prevention training and consultation services to Pennsylvania schools and communities. Nutter is also a certified Partners Against Hate trainer and assists schools in the prevention of and effective response to bias-related tension incidents. Additionally, she is a certified Terrorism Awareness and Prevention trainer.
Nutter received her bachelor’s degree in English education from Messiah College and holds over fifty FEMA certificates relative to emergency preparedness and disaster response. She holds a psychological first aid certificate from the American Red Cross. She is a graduate of the National Institute Against Hate Crimes and Terrorism, a collaborative training effort between the U.S. Department of Justice and the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. She also graduated from the Anti-Defamation League's Advanced Training School course on Extremist and Terrorist Threats and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Citizen’s Academy.
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Susan Villani, Ed.D.
Senior Program Associate
WestEd’s Learning Innovations Program
Susan Villani has been coaching and teaching administrators to become more effective leaders and instructors for over 30 years.
Villani specializes in consulting and professional development in teacher evaluation, coaching educators to improve instruction, mentoring and induction of new teachers and principals, building collaborative school communities, and formative assessment.
Villani has led statewide initiatives in New York, New Hampshire, and Maine, and has worked in many school districts to build capacity of teachers and administrators.
She leads administrators, teacher leaders, and staff developers in sessions adapted from Leverage Leadership. These sessions introduce participants ways to increase student achievement through frequent observations and intensive coaching. She has coaches building leaders through Coach for Success. She is a member of the WestEd team that partners with the Danielson Group to teach and coach educators about the Framework for Teaching.
Villani coauthored, with WestEd’s Kathy Dunne, Mentoring New Teachers Through Collaborative Coaching: Linking Teacher and Student Learning and the accompanying facilitation and training guide.
She also authored Are You Sure You’re the Principal? Guiding New and Aspiring Leaders, Comprehensive Mentoring Programs for New Teachers: Models of Induction and Support, and Mentoring and Induction Programs That Support New Principals.
She frequently presents at national and regional conferences.
Prior to joining WestEd in 2000, Villani was a school principal for 21 years and served as an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University for more than 10 years.
She received an EdD in educational administration from Northeastern University, an MEd in elementary education from Tufts University, and a BA in business administration from Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton.
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