I am a CTE leader who has sat at all three sides of the table.
What students actually experience in a pathway.
What employers are actually hiring for.
What it takes to run this at scale.
CTE only works when someone can translate between three groups that rarely share a room: teachers, employers, and central office. I've held a seat in each of them, in that order and then back again — deliberately.
Pike Township Schools · Vision Academy · Options Charter · Lansing Community College
Eight years across K–12 computer science, secondary science, and adult developmental instruction. Redesigned a grades 9–12 science curriculum around a fully digital delivery model. This is where the instructional instinct came from — every district decision has a fourth-period version of itself.
Johnson & Johnson
Built a Tableau dashboard on Workday data modeling voluntary attrition across 30,000 employees, then applied predictive analytics to forecast post-pandemic attrition risk. Saw firsthand how a Fortune 50 employer actually forecasts talent supply and demand.
Michigan State University
Strategy, operations, and data analytics — the vocabulary employers and workforce development partners already speak, which is what lets a pathway conversation start as a business conversation rather than a favor.
EY-Parthenon
Led workforce and labor analysis for a three-hospital health system restructuring — modeling FTE requirements, staffing distribution, and labor cost drivers, contributing to $12M in savings. Where the habit of sizing a market before committing resources came from, which is the same discipline a CLNA demands.
Houston Independent School District
Returned to public education by choice. Synthesized Community Advisory Committee and town hall input into recommendations informing a $4.4B capital bond program — and learned that in a district, community relationships are the implementation plan.
Houston Independent School District
Owned a district-wide retention portfolio for the largest school district in Texas. Built Power BI dashboards on SAP data to surface overtime trends and cost drivers, then synthesized department leader input into a strategy identifying $2–3M in addressable annual savings, delivered to executive leadership.
Cohort for Economic Opportunity
Built a 501(c)(3) from formation through board development and a pre-pilot cohort. Ran an independent regional CTE needs assessment across Northwest Greater Houston, developed an employer engagement and advisory council structure, and delivered family programming to 15 student-family units.
Waller Independent School District
Went back to the classroom on purpose, to build a director's strategy on current evidence rather than memory. Taught the business and accounting pathway to TEKS and IBC alignment, reaching 60% Accounting I & II NOCTI attainment in year one, while running the region's labor market analysis in parallel.
Independent regional analysis using Texas Labor Market Information, TEA CTE readiness data, and O*NET occupational profiles — mapping which Greater Houston occupations are actually growing, what they pay, which credentials gate entry, and where a high school program of study can put a student on the right side of that line. It's the same evidence base a Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment runs on, and I've been doing it voluntarily.
of Texas jobs will require a postsecondary credential by 2036.
of Texas eighth graders do not earn a postsecondary credential within six years of their expected graduation.
in projected lifetime earnings lost by a single Texas eighth-grade cohort.
percent of Texas students below grade level in math and in reading.
Source: Texas 2036, State of Readiness and workforce projections
This is the gap a CTE department exists to close. HB 8 realigned community college funding to credentials that carry labor market value; CCMR accountability asks districts for the same. The districts that win the next decade will be the ones whose programs of study were chosen from data rather than inherited from a course catalog.
A working Power BI report analyzing career and technical education across Greater Houston school districts, built from Texas Labor Market Information and O*NET. Interactive — filter it yourself. This is the live file behind the needs assessment, not a screenshot of one.
CEO is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit I founded to give talented students — especially those who have been systematically overlooked — the economic navigation capital to move with intention through high-value, high-wage, and high-demand career pathways.
It connects leadership, workforce readiness, entrepreneurship, and social emotional learning in one intentional experience. The through-line: ambition is evenly distributed and navigation isn't.
Students name what they're good at and what they want before anyone hands them a pathway.
The durable skills and credential literacy that convert a diploma into an offer.
Building the capacity to create economic value, not only to be hired into it.
Communicating and working across difference, and becoming a proactive problem solver.
For a hiring committee, the relevant part isn't the mission statement. It's that running a needs assessment, recruiting employer partners, seating a board, and convening families are the daily work of a CTE director — and I've done all four without a district's budget or brand behind me.
The frameworks a CTE director is accountable to, used in practice rather than studied.
Seeking CTE Director and career-readiness leadership roles, with a primary focus on Greater Houston and openness to the right role nationally.