Erica Harrell is the CEO of Erica Harrell Consulting, an education consulting firm created to help dedicated, overworked K-12 principals and district leaders create organized, strategic professional development plans to increase student achievement and improve staff capacity. Erica has over 12 years of experience in K-8 education. She began her career as a special education teacher and has held multiple leadership roles from instructional coach to principal to Director of Leadership Development. In all of her roles, Erica has always had the desire to grow and help others do the same. As a school leader, Erica has led teams to develop strategic and comprehensive project plans for multi-day and multi-week professional development series and coached leaders to ensure high-quality session facilitation. Under her leadership, a team of school-based leaders facilitated 4-week summer professional development with an average of over 90% of participants rating sessions and operations as “Platinum” (highest rating on 5-point Likert scale) multiple years in a row, she doubled third grade ELA scores in one year and coached 2nd year teacher to be the highest performing math teacher among all Achievement Network Schools. Erica is originally from Upstate New York. She attended University of Maryland, College Park for undergrad where she obtained a BA in Sociology and Communications. She holds a Masters of Education in Instructional Leadership from Relay Graduate School of Education. Erica currently lives in Maryland with her husband and one year old son.