In this episode of Build Momentum, Dr. Rod Berger, a communications and media expert who writes about thought leadership and education for Forbes and has previously contributed to Scholastic and the Huffington Post, joins us. 

Dr. Berger has interviewed the likes of Sal Khan, former US Department of Education Secretary Arnie Dugan, ministers of education, best selling author Daniel Pink, Sir Ken Robinson, and leading edtech investors. Dr. Berger has previously served in leadership and advisory roles for edtech companies in a guest lecture at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management.

Some Questions I Ask:

• Dr. Berger’s PR Background (1:45)
• How do you describe thought leadership? (4:32)
• How would you recommend the listeners to start thinking about incorporating some of those strategies in their own companies with their leaders? (5:47)
• Tell me about Press Release, does it have value and when does it have value? (12:17)
• How do you like to receive media pitches, and what can people do to build better relationships with media personalities like yourself? (14:30)
• Tell us about your new book (19:42)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Understanding PR and how it is an evolving space for people. (1:23)
• PR strategies and challenges and how to overcome it (6:16)
• The value of Press Release (12:16)
• PR Pitching tips (14:43)
• Sneak peek of Dr. Rod Berger’s new book. (19:48)

Quotes:

“It's about the questions that you can actually put into the group, right, that you can utilize as a precursor to a conversation where all parties are going to learn something that to me is thought leadership.”

“In PR, it’s understanding the why and then the who, because that will help extend, I think strategic opportunities.”

“It's never just about the message, right? It's about everything and the message.”

“For me, it's just be honest in the pitch, right? And at least give some sense that you spent some time and understanding who you're pitching to.”

Connect with Dr. Rod Berger:
Dr. Rod Berger’s' Twitter
Dr. Rod Berger’s LinkedIn
Dr. Rod Berger’s Email

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, We have our very special guest Doug Roberts, who is the founder and CEO of the Institute for Education Innovation. He and his organization specialize in bridging the gaps between individuals and organizations that are committed to seeing students succeed in school and in life while creating a safe space for problem-solving and innovative thinking.

Doug Roberts is an educator and has also worked for many years as a sales representative and VP of sales for several start-up companies.

Some Questions I Ask:

• In detail, tell us about your organization? (1:13)
• How do District leaders or Supes and organizations work together effectively? (4:31)
• From your unique perspective and approach, what are the themes you're seeing right now, as we are on the horizon of emerging from this pandemic??  (6:29)
• What's going to stick from this crazy pandemic experience? (12:02)
• What’s coming up in terms of your speaking and coaching events? (15:58)
•  so you want people to attend? Are you looking for additional sponsors, if companies want to get involved? (21:54)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• What IEI is and how it helps superintendents and organizations (1:23)
• IEI’s hybrid approach in bridging supes and organizations in this pandemic. (4:36)
• How the organizations and supes adapt to this pandemic. (12:12)
• Upcoming events and activities ahead (16:05)

Quotes:

“We've built a community, we refer to it as a family actually, just because that's a big part of our value system is just about, you know, supporting each other and being a network and being a community that helps each other regardless of whether our role is on the industry side or on the district side.”

“Education is a people's business. So we believe that the people need to get together in a more efficient way.”

“We've been connected in other ways. There are many different ways to connect. Yeah. And this year, we've tried to find as many as possible that are pandemic friendly. Each event we do we pivot more toward what we used to do.”

“We want to provide knowledge, guidance, strategy, intelligence, from the seat of a district leader to our industry partners”

Connect with Doug Roberts  and IEI on:
Doug Roberts' Twitter
Doug Roberts' IEI Email
IEI Twitter
IEI Website
SupesTalk Website

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, We have an amazing guest, Dawn McAvoy. She is the Head of Marketing for Acendre. And today she shares how she built her ed-tech journey.

Some Questions I Ask:

• Would you mind sharing your background including your long history in ed-tech and what’s currently happening in ed-tech? (1:18)
• The current situation of the community colleges and how they are experiencing a renaissance right now (4:12)
• Tell me about where you’re working now?  (6:48)
• When do you admit that visionary perspective is one of your superpowers (11:48)
• How do you help people manifest their visions? (13:55)
• How can we hone our skills at both increasing our capacity to think bigger, but then making sure the execution is flawless? (16:06)
• Have you seen PR to be a valuable resource for either yourself or organizations that you've worked with over the years? (22:24)
• What is your future prediction for ed-tech? (23:47)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• What’s happening in ed-tech and the connection of technology and education. (2:23)
• What Acendre is and their online learning piece (6:58)
• Dawn’s visionary perspective on everything and how she is a believer of manifesting your vision. (12:06)
• Learning how to simplify in order to solve the most important problems. (16:16)
• What is empathetic marketing and what it means to Dawn (19:55)
• The Value of PR and the future of ed-tech (22:37) 

Quotes:

“Technology is this great, or it has the capacity to be a great equalizer and to provide access to things that people in certain geographies or certain circumstances wouldn't normally have..”

“I am a believer in manifestation. And to me, manifestation and visions are very aligned. What do you want to manifest?  That's your vision.”

“You have to create a discipline of giving yourself time to vision things. ”

“I think empathetic marketing. It's really about Being able to put yourself in your user, your prospect your customer, like choose your term, it's being able to put yourself into someone else's shoes, and try to understand as much about their situation as possible”

Connect with Dawn McAvoy on:
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, we chat with Leslie Lernhart, the Communications Director for Tucson Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona. TUSD is the largest district in Tucson, serving more than 47,000 students in 89 schools and programs.

Some Questions I Ask:

• Would you mind just telling us more about your district other than what I shared and the students you serve? (1:18)
• With the challenges that TUSD is experiencing during the pandemic, do you feel like you have recovered? (2:50)
• What are your plans for continuing distance learning?  (4:15)
• Do you think that the community responded positively to having that central point of communication and they knew where to go when they needed information? (6:54)
• With all of the workload and planning, how did you manage and do you have a large team? (7:52)
• Do you think that other districts can and should replicate being accessible to the media and to their community?? (17:16)
• What would you say is a big takeaway or a lesson that you've learned, in addition to what you just shared, or a piece of advice that you would give to other district leaders on communication? (18:57)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• TUSD background, their demographics and challenges. (1:23)
• How TUSD adjusted to communicating during a pandemic. (3:13)
• Utilization of online platforms for reaching out to the different communities within the district. (4:26)
• District visibility and communication with the community. (17:24)

Quotes:

“So it's just a lot of moving parts that has been really interesting for us, as well as we are a very traditional school district. So having online platforms was not something that was a huge part of our district, but now has become a giant part and really helped us bring us which in a lot of ways it's a positive into the 21st century to be able to look for the future to really help our students.”

“I really have a collaborative team and was really grateful that they were super helpful in making sure that answers were getting received, and that information was shared really proactively.”

“People really want to hear from you. So even if you don't have all the answers, it's okay to say, ``I don't have all the answers, but this is what I do, and be as factual as you can and as transparent as you can.”

Connect with Leslie Lernhart and TUSD on:
Website

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, our guest, Samuel Reed III a.k.a Reed, shares his expertise in teacher-preneurship. 

Reed is a teacher-preneur. He specializes in not just in teaching but also helping studetns and adults learn how to start a business and get it up and running.

Sam Reed, after getting his MBA, joined the Peace Corps as a Business Development Volunteer in Botswana. After finishing his tour, he started an information service and training company in Africa and Botswana but went bankrupt before they could make it on their fifth year mark. So he came back to the US and decided to become an educator and he realized that he has this entrepreneurial mindset and wanted to bring his entrepreneurial background into teaching.

Some Questions I Ask:

• Tell us more about your background. (1:06)
• What is he up to now and what role has innovation played in what he’s doing now (4:33)
• What are some of the themes that you see arise out of those conversations you have with both the adults and the students, challenges, positive outcomes or transformations you're witnessing?  (8:01)
• How did COVID impact your program? (10:44)
• How has the pandemic impacted your organization and how are you moving through that? (12:59)
• So how has failure impacted your career? (15:39)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Designing and developing and formation of the business one on one side hustle acceleration program. (10:53)
• Start of the Medium Blog post showing the intersection of like innovation, intersection of teaching, and the intersection of just like living a life. (11:56)
• The word of mouth is actually more powerful, because those folks are going to spread the spread ability of what I'm doing. (13:49)
• Celebrate your failures and juice people up and make you feel amazing (15:56)
• Learning about the disposition of an entrepreneur (17:57) 

Quotes:

“I want to teach young people because I think it's going to have more impact and I want to teach young people to not necessarily have to chase money.”

“I'm an entrepreneur, how can I bring this entrepreneurial background into teaching?”

“Don't go big, go focus.”

“If you're going to pitch your business, your data, your story has to be there. But you have to have some numbers that go with your stories. And those numbers need to be able to tell a story.”

Connect with Samuel Reed III on:
Website
Blog

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, We have an incredible guest, Gina Condon, who shares her insight on building awareness using PR. 

Gina Condon is the founder of Construct, an education non-profit that works across the education system to accelerate educators as designers, ready to inspire a new generation of thinkers and doers, collaborators and change-makers.

Gina Condon has two degrees in developmental psychology and went to the Graduate School of Education at Harvard.

Some Questions I Ask:

• Tell us more about your background. (1:01)
• Tell us more about Construct (1:47)
• how you got started and promoted your program and it's something that could be replicated in other cities? (5:25)
• For other nonprofit leaders, how would you recommend that they share their message and their story? (11:08)
• How has the pandemic impacted your organization and how are you moving through that? (14:40)
• If you had one final piece of advice, what would that be? anything that you can share? Or just insights that you've gained? (18:12)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• PR and the importance of communication, written oral and digital is so important, and these are the skills that are the high-level transferable skills that all employers want and to succeed in the world that we know is changing constantly with the innovation economy. (2:20)
• The entrepreneurial mindset is the future of education (4:01)
• Having the skills to succeed in the innovation economy requires agency and autonomy. (12:21)
• When you become really crystal clear on the value you add in your theory of change you can unleash the joy of learning (13:15)

Quotes:

“The entrepreneurial mindset really ensures that kids can be the entrepreneurs of their own life.”

“When you are a startup, you would have the opportunity to stay closer to the user experience, You're really much closer to it, so then you are being able to really study those needs of the users.”

“Entrepreneurs don't always move slow, sometimes you do have to slow down to go fast”

Connect with Gina Condon on:
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn
Youtube
Website

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, We have a spectacular guest, Brad Weinstein,  who shares his evolution from being an educator to an education influencer on social media. He shares tips and tricks for maximizing social media, particularly for the education sector.

Brad Weinstein is the founder of Teacher Goals. Teacher Goals is one of the leaders in social media for teaching and education that has a huge following on different social media platforms.

Brad went from an elementary teacher, a middle school teacher, to being a high school principal. He is also the one of the authors of the book Hacking School Discipline: 9 Ways to Create a Culture of Empathy and Responsibility Using Restorative Justice.

Some Questions I Ask:

• How you got your start in education and your evolution and what you're focusing on now? (1:45)
• So after you went to the new job at the innovative school, and you authored your book, what happened next? When did teacher goals start, tell me more about teacher goals and how they came to be. (10:31)
• What your secret to success. But I think you just told us it's hours of dedication and time. Is it easier now than it used to be? (18:46)
• Do you have any tools you recommend, I know you've told me before when we chatted about something that you use to drive people into an email list. Tell me about that. And other tools that you use to make your life easier? (21:56)
• What are your tips for a viral post? how to do it and what are your strategies? (24:50)

 In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• How Brad got his start in Education and his evolution (2:05)
• It’s not an easy start. It's gonna take a lot of time, years, and years of consistency with your posting efforts (17:12)
• Understanding that putting yourself out there to the world there's going to be some good comes with that, there's going to be some negative outcomes with that. (20:39)
• Knowing what's going to work, what isn't going to work is important. (20:54)
• You should constantly strive for content that is going to have never been seen before. (21:20)

Quotes:

“I literally spend eight hours a day or more on social media. And that's what people don't realize they don't get is that it's a lot harder than it looks to run in accounts, especially assessable accounts”

“The consistency is huge too because some people will tweet once and that they want to eat for three days and then they'll tweet Seven days later, and then they'll tweet five times in one day. And that is just you know, people tweeting when they have something to say. But when you're trying to build an audience, you need to think about what you're trying to say. And even plan it out a little bit with that consistency.”

“If I'm going to amplify someone, they have to be good for education, they have to be somebody that aligns with our mission and our values.”

Connect with Brad Weinstein on:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Jason Anklowitz likes to call himself a translator, but not for the reasons you might think. 

As a former educator who now partners with both startups and school districts to provide change management support, guide technology integrations and streamline communication, he helps to bridge the gaps that can arise between educators and their technology providers. 

In particular, one of his areas of expertise is understanding how to communicate effectively with various stakeholders throughout an organization (both on the district side and the private sector). 

We discuss the process he's found to be the most effective and what he recommends others consider prior to reaching out to an education institution. 

Here's a link to Jason's LinkedIn.

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Liz Gilly Sims is an elementary art teacher, and she always felt like that was her path. There was only art in the classroom in her future. Then, after the events of 2020 and the growing civil unrest, she felt like she wanted and needed to do something more. 

She embarked on a journey to explore how to get involved using the skills she possesses. Eventually this led to her launching open educational resources for educators everywhere. 

In this episode of Build Momentum, she shares her story and how a mindset shift expanded her perspective of what teaching can and should look like and how she is contributing to change beyond her classroom. 

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

In this episode of Build Momentum, we talk with Kimberly Smith, the Executive Director for the Center for Inclusive Innovation and the League of Innovative Schools, at Digital Promise. 

Kimberly's passion for innovation, inclusivity and entrepreneurship in education is framed through the lens that anything is possible. 

We discuss how to support students, educators and foster entrepreneurship  throughout the education communities. We talk about failing forward, having comfort with risk, and seeking out opportunities to partner with and align with organizations who are leading the way or on the precipice of innovation and change. 

She encourages us to get out and get involved, be in a fellowship, join a community,  a board of directors or connect with your audiences and look up and engage with your constituents. 

Learn more about Kimberly here: https://digitalpromise.org/our-team/kimberly-smith/

Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook