As a lifelong public school educator—having served as a teacher, administrator, Individualized Learning Specialist, Technology Coordinator, RtI Coordinator, ESL/LPAC Coordinator, Critical Student Intervention Coordinator, and Dean of Instruction—I have worked extensively with data throughout my career. Early in my professional journey, I earned a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction and became a state-certified Master Technology Teacher.

Working with data is both a passion and a challenge for me. I believe that meaningful, actionable insights can be extracted from data to solve real-world problems in classrooms, schools, districts, and state policy. However, working with data is complex; even a clean dataset can present hidden challenges if not approached critically. Being “data-driven” is not a silver bullet for education, and failing to ask the right questions about data can lead to unintended consequences.

My practical experience and desire to think more critically about data inspired me to bridge these fields. To accomplish this, I earned a Master of Science degree in Advanced Data Analytics. Through this program, I gained hands-on experience in statistical analysis using Python and Excel, interactive data visualization with Tableau and Plotly, and evaluating machine learning models (such as linear and logistic regression, decision trees, and random forests) in Jupyter Notebooks and Google Colab.

My extensive background in K–12 public education enables me to bring a unique, grounded perspective to data wrangling and analysis.