The EJT Show

Summer Wood, Ph.D. is the founder and CEO of Edvantage Coaching & Consulting. She is currently working as a full-time principal. She is dedicated to not only building up her own team of teachers, but expanding her reach to teachers throughout the country. Her goal is to ensure that all students are afforded the opportunity to be taught in spaces that are equitable and engaging. She is laser-focused on coaching teachers to build capacity as anti-racist, culturally responsive instructors.

Marthea Pitts, MSW, is an award-winning workforce development career specialist and macro social worker. After 8+ years of working in government, for-profit, nonprofit, and education sectors in front-line and leadership positions, she identified a gap in professional development and career coaching for frontline human services professionals and non-clinical social workers wanting to advance in their careers. Marthea has achieved much success coaching & training career seekers and students. Based on this, it has become her life’s work to coach & mentor human services professionals who are changing the world!

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.

Lydia Mercer is a dynamic and holistic coach, creator, facilitator, and trainer. She leads with love, equity, and inquiry. She is empathetic, and her way of being reflects compassion, especially during courageous conversations. She builds authentic relationships through a holistic approach and uses differentiated coaching lenses to positively impact lives.

Lydia's current work is grounded in (Un)learning her own racist trauma and supporting others as they examine their own. The (Un)Learning Space is the converging of her lived experience and her soul's purpose.

Lydia has influenced the Chicago educational landscape for the past fourteen years. She has designed and facilitated numerous Diversity Equity and Inclusion workshops and coaching sessions, revised curriculum and resources to be more culturally relevant, and actively engages in her own (un)learning journey.

Lydia has a Bachelor's Degree in Education from the University of Kansas (2005) and earned her Master's Degree in Cultural Education and Social Policy from Loyola, Chicago (2010).

The only thing that matches Mercer’s passion for antiracism work is her toddler daughter, and her husband Jason.

Meredith Stanley is K-8 math coach and specialist and founder of Meredith 4 Math LLC, a math education consulting business. A former elementary classroom teacher and instructional coach, she is a two-time finalist for the Presidential Award for Math and Science, a Buncombe County Teacher of the Year, a Buncombe County Math Teacher of the Year, and a National Board certified teacher. In addition to supporting schools and districts across the country through her consulting business, she is also a lecturer for the Mount Holyoke College Masters of Mathematics Teaching program and serves the teachers of North Carolina as the Elementary State VP for the North Carolina Council for Teaching Mathematics. Meredith’s passion for providing quality mathematics instruction to marginalized students was the impetus for starting Meredith 4 Math in 2015. Now Meredith 4 Math provides interactive, classroom-based, professional learning and coaching experiences for schools and districts. These experiences engage educators in learning math instructional strategies that position students to develop positive math identities, to connect conceptual understanding to fluency, and to make sense of mathematics through representation and problem solving. You can find more information about Meredith, as well as a bank of instructional resources, at www.meredith4math.com and on Twitter and IG at @meredith4math.

Eno Richardson is an assistant principal and the founder of Eno Richardson Consulting (ERC). She is passionate about education and believes that all children deserve excellent schooling. She is most fervent about reading and the ability for books to transform the minds and the lives of children. Eno believes that reading is the great equalizer. Eno possesses a core belief that a school environment which cultivates independent readers and builds a love of reading is a school where students will excel beyond measure. Despite a student’s race, background ethnic, or socioeconomic status, the ability to read a diverse selection of books unlocks growth and provides unimaginable opportunities. Eno has served in schools for 10 years as a classroom teacher and currently as an assistant principal. She has experience teaching a range of scholars in both middle and high school. She has invested her years in urban schools working diligently to ensure students get the excellent education that they deserve. As the founder of Eno Richardson Consulting, Eno works with school districts and school leaders to assess the efficacy of their current reading programs, create robust reading initiatives, lead collaborative professional development, build investment strategies and track scholar progress in order to build a culture of independent reading that propels academic gains while fostering a student love of reading. Eno graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor of Science in Child Development and Medicine, Health and Society and a minor in Spanish. She is a graduate of Nashville Teaching Fellows under The New Teacher Project. She obtained her Masters of Education from Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education with a focus on Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools. Eno holds a specialty in English Language Learners and is a graduate of the Relay National Principals Academy Fellowship.

With over 20 years of experience in education, Beth is a dynamic, accomplished executive with a national reputation as a successful, positive leader. Most recently, Beth founded and served as Chief Executive and Academic Officer at Chicago Collegiate, a 5th-12th grade charter school network on the Far South Side of Chicago. Chicago Collegiate has the highest-rated open-enrollment high school on the Far South Side and is on track to have 100% of their students accepted to college in 2021, the year their founding class of 5th graders graduates. Before that, Beth served in roles as varied as the Senior Managing Director of the Teach For America Institute to the founding Dean of Instruction at KIPP: Gaston College Preparatory. She is an national award-winning teacher, and founder of several highly successful leadership development programs,. Beth graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University with a degree in American Studies, with a focus on social justice and is a single mom who lives in Chicago with her three amazing kids and soon, a pandemic puppy.

Okema is Founder and CEO of Okema Simpson Consulting, LLC. She's a native of Oxford, NC where she grew up knowing that she would one day become an educator. With 23 years of education, Okema has been able to impact hundreds of scholars and was able to extend the reach of her impact by serving as an Multi Classroom Leader (MCL) at Ranson Middle school where she led teams of teachers to positively impact the academic growth and achievement of scholars each year. Okema credits much of her success to the investments that she made in herself to engage in her own professional development. She vows to be the educator and leader that students and teachers deserve, therefore she commits to doing the work to achieve this. Okema started her business to inspire, empower, and encourage aspiring and current educators and leaders to take charge of their own professional development so that they can show up being the type of educator that they want to be and the type of educator that their scholars deserve.

Chrissy spent the last 15 years managing diverse teams in dynamic contexts. In that time, she developed a real passion for managing and coaching. The way people feel at and about work matters, period. Engaged employees not only show up to work, but contribute strongly to their roles, teams and workplace culture. Managers need more support and coaching to be successful in that role, and that's where Chrissy comes in!