Nicole is a School Design Services Partner at Transcend. Prior to joining Transcend, she worked across private and public education over 20 years in New Mexico and Texas.
Nicole was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and spent her later childhood years in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. She began her educational career as a private art and music teacher. In 2004 she joined the teaching faculty at Edgewood Elementary School in Edgewood, New Mexico as a 4th, and later a 6th grade teacher before becoming Principal of EES. In 2013, she joined San Marcos CISD in San Marcos, Texas as the Director of Elementary Curriculum and Instruction, and within a few short years, her role evolved to encompass innovation and instructional model redesign.
Across the eight years in SMCISD, Nicole partnered with school leaders, district leaders, and community partners to redesign the district’s traditional pre-kindergarten school to a play, inquiry, and language development model, the bilingual program from a late exit model to a two-way dual language immersion model, a traditional elementary school to a multi-age personalized learning model with blended learning, and a new personalized learning campus with project based and blended learning. Most recently Nicole led the district’s Office of Innovation and launched whole school redesign work at three additional schools, and a program redesign with the district’s alternative high school program.
Nicole earned a BFA from Minnesota State University, teaching credentials and an MA in Curriculum and Instructional Leadership from College of Santa Fe, and Superintendent certification from University of New Mexico. She is a doctoral candidate in Global Educational Leadership at Lamar University. Nicole lives in San Marcos, Texas with two of her three lovely young adult children. Her third child is adulting and lives nearby.
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Leaps for Equitable, 21st-Century Learning
Transcend’s Leaps for Equitable, 21st-Century Learning describes the key ways we believe the student experience must change so that schools can prepare all young people to thrive in and transform the world.
Transform Learning with Community-Based Design
Community-based design is a collaborative and local process that brings together young people, educators, administrators, caregivers, and experts to redesign learning. It goes beyond traditional school improvement initiatives by involving the entire community in reshaping...
