Taina joins Transcend as a School Design Partner. In this capacity she will support educational leaders in their work to reimagine and design school for extraordinary experiences and outcomes for each student.
Most recently Taina worked with a team in New York City to design, launch, and co-lead the first high school for Emergency Management in the United States. She strategically co-designed and developed the school model including the mission, vision, instructional priorities, and professional learning and feedback structures. Her work at the school was grounded in collaborating with all stakeholders to support students to build the skills, knowledge, credentials, networks, and agency to be prepared for the colleges and careers of their choice and to pursue their dreams. A focus of Taina’s work was to develop an instructional vision grounded in equity and access where students solve rigorous and relevant problems with novel solutions through experiential learning. In addition, Taina built leadership teams at the school to drive the instructional and socio-emotional vision through an R&D process. Under her leadership the school consistently performed at high levels including exceeding the city and state academic metrics.
Taina has served in many educational leadership roles. These roles include teaching ENL and ELA in the Bronx, leading workshops on the teaching of literacy at Columbia University, as well as presenting on instructional methods at Seton Hall. She directed a literacy program for newly arrived adult immigrants where she was responsible for strategically building a teacher training program, as well as developing and strengthening community partnerships and funding. In addition, she served in the United States Peace Corps in Ukraine teaching in K-12 classrooms.
Taina earned her Master’s Degree at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds School Building Leadership and School District Leadership Licenses from CUNY. She received a B.A. from the University of Nevada, Reno. Taina enjoys running, eating all things sweet, and spending time with her husband, daughter, and pet pug.
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