Base Camp Coding Academy

Named to Southern Living’s Southerners of the Year 2017 while leading Base Camp Coding Academy, I am passionate about creating transformative opportunities for young people in rural communities. My impact at Base Camp has granted over 30 recent high school graduates the training to forego traditional four-year degree paths and enter employment earning double the local median income. Base Camp launched in 2016 as a three-year pilot and I was recruited as the organization’s first employee, charged with guiding the program from concept to implementation. The program’s success through the pilot sparked a new initiative, and now Base Camp serves as the cornerstone of Everest: Mississippi’s First Rural Education and Innovation Hub. Base Camp is the unifying enterprise in a consortium of regional workforce development agencies and regional tech-giants like FedEx, CSpire, and CoreLogic working to make Everest possible.
Learn more about Base Camp at basecampcodingacademy.org/

Executive Director

October 2018 to Present

• Formalize student progress indicators and analytic feedback resources
• Grow student-partnership nominator network from 15 to 30+ schools
• Manage board of trustees relationships and engagement opportunities
• Coach instructional team in pedagogy practices
• Expand regional student employment footprint

Director

February 2016 to October 2018

• Led classroom instruction leading to 100% employment rate of graduates
• Crafted technical curriculum later adopted by Mississippi Community College Board
• Trained students in Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Django, and Java
• Designed prospective student admissions process and rubrics
• Created organization structures for student evaluations, promotion, and graduation

Teach For America

I am committed to creating positive proof points for systemic change, and my role at Teach For America leverages my experience generating innovative solutions to support the efforts across Mississippi and Arkansas providing students access to high quality education. As Director, Data and Analytics, I collaborate with regional management ensuring the Greater Delta team has strategic clarity and access to resources accurately assessing progress. I served in the organization’s first region-specific data role, and my tenure on staff resulted in my innovations being adopted in other regions across the organization. My responsibilities have grown to support all Greater Delta executive operations including teacher development, alumni support, regional staff support, operations, and fundraising. By automating a multitude of support structures with custom-built software, I am able to double my impact in the region.

Director, Data and Analytics

February 2016 to Present

• Create cross-functional regional dashboard to monitor priority-aligned progress metrics
• Re-envision team-wide data orientation through custom built analytic tools
• Consult with managers to assess progress and craft intervention strategies
• Oversee data for 20,000+ students in 75+ Mississippi and Arkansas schools
• Strategize with executive team to create staff training experiences

Data and Operations Strategist

June 2014 to February 2016

• Designed and executed teacher training experiences for 600+ participants
• Developed an online portfolio-based professional development platform
• Implemented efforts to evaluate routine feedback for 100% of teachers

Manager, Teacher Leadership Development

June 2012 to June 2014

• Managed a cohort of 30 Teach For America Corps Members in 10 north Mississippi schools to achieve 1.2 years of learning.
• Facilitated large and small group professional development and diversity trainings.
• Coached K-12 teachers to an average of 1.2 years of learning in classrooms

Corps Member

June 2010 to Jun 2012

• Served as a high school math teacher and interventionist in the 2010 Teach For America Mississippi Delta corps
• Built strong relationships with veteran teachers and community members in Marvell, Arkansas
• Achieved 90%+ proficiency rate in remediation courses on state assessments and resulted in value-added measures promoting Marvell High School out of school improvement status

My impact and experience has granted me an abundance of learning opportunities in which I can leverage those lessons to enact my personal leadership to support teams and initiatives. I thrive in “never-been-done-before” environments; using design thinking to diagnose challenges and implement human-centered solutions.

TEDxCorbin

Program Director

2018 to Present

• Manage all aspects of backstage technical requirements during production
• Direct operations volunteers to ensure dress rehearsal and event day runs smoothly
• Consult with and advise the executive director and operations team to develop multi-day operational plan to coordinate a team of 50 staff and 20 speakers

Teach For America Jacksonville

Online Development Consultant

2015 to Present

• Collaborate with program team leadership to curate an online suite of professional development portfolios used by teacher-support staff
• Construct Google Drive applications to automate record keeping and feedback summaries; generating a savings of 2+ hours each week for staff and session facilitators

Revolve Community

REALITY Outside Logistics Leader

2014 to 2015

• Owned event logistics and managed relationships with travel agency and host facility
• Designed experience programming based in values-based leadership principles

I am a self-taught programmer proficient in Python, HTML/CSS, and JavaScript. My most extensive experience is using Google Apps Script JavaScript library to integrate and automate services in Google Drive Suite. I have a variety of experiences in a diverse set of languages, libraries, and frameworks such as Java, Spring, Django, C++, Bootstrap, jQuery, Bokeh, D3.js, Git, and more. I have high proficiency with Microsoft Office tools, and I welcome new opportunities to learn more.

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