Supporting the Whole Child

• @KevinMcCartyCA (personal) @AsmKevinMcCarty (official legislative)
• Kevin McCarty was elected to the California State Assembly in 2014 to represent the 7th Assembly District. As Chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance, McCarty made historic investments in public education, early childhood education, and career technical education, and increased the number of students enrolled in California’s Community College, CSU, and UC systems. McCarty’s other legislative priorities include: expanding health care access, fighting climate change, championing criminal justice reform, curbing gun violence, tackling poverty, and advocating for the middle class. Previously, McCarty served on the Sacramento City Council from 2004 to 2014.

• @LDH_ed
• Linda Darling-Hammond is President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute and the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University. She is the former President of the American Educational Research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has authored more than 500 publications and has conducted extensive research on issues of school reform, equity, and accountability. Among her most recent publications are Be the Change: Reinventing School for Student Success and Empowered Educators: How Leading Nations Design Systems for Teaching Quality.

• @hjhough
• Heather Hough is the Executive Director of PACE. Prior to serving in this role, she led the partnership between PACE and the CORE Districts. Her recent work has focused on using research to strengthen state structures supporting continuous improvement and advance policies that support the whole child. Dr. Hough has worked in a variety of capacities to support policy and practice in education, including as an Improvement Advisor at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University, and the Center for Education Policy at SRI International. Dr. Hough holds a PhD in Education Policy and a BA in Public Policy from Stanford University.

• @LPI_Learning
• Jessica Cardichon is the Director of Federal Policy of the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) and Director of LPI’s Washington, DC, office. Her work focuses on developing federal legislative and regulatory strategy and policy. Previously, she served as Education Counsel to Senator Bernie Sanders, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and as Senior Director for Federal Policy and Advocacy at the Alliance for Excellent Education. Cardichon began her career teaching elementary school in New York City and then working for Teachers College, Columbia University, as a program manager for implementation of early career educator induction programs.

• @jraym0
• Jonathan Raymond is President of the Stuart Foundation. He brings insights from many years of experience in education, first as the Chief Accountability Officer of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School system in North Carolina, and then as Superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD). From 2009 to 2013, his innovative approaches guided SCUSD’s impoverished schools through a recession and transformed Sacramento’s poorest performing schools in the neediest neighborhoods into some of the city’s highest performing schools. In his new book, Wildflowers: A School Superintendent's Challenge to America, he shares insights into his time as Superintendent.

• @tallbright
• Taylor N. Allbright is a Ph.D. candidate in the Urban Education Policy program, with a concentration in k–12 policy, at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. She is advised by Dr. Julie Marsh. Her research draws on political, organizational, and sociocultural lenses to examine policies with implicit or explicit goals of promoting educational equity, with a particular focus on issues of race. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, Allbright was a high school English and ethnic studies teacher.

• @KriztenBrown
• Kristen Brown is leading the California Department of Education (CDE)’s One System Serving the Whole Child Initiative. She has held several other positions within the CDE. She was the Director of Project READ, a project to increase the reading and English language arts proficiency of students in select California middle schools. Brown was the California State Lead for the National Center and State Collaborative Consortium, which developed a system of alternate assessments for students with disabilities. She also led the initial work with the California SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium and worked on the California English Development Test. Dr. Brown holds a PhD in Education Administration, Policy, and Leadership from the University of Southern California.

• @COREdistricts
• Dave Calhoun is a Senior Associate at CORE Districts. The former Executive Director of Research, Evaluation and Assessment (REA) for Fresno Unified School District, he has represented the district within the CORE collaborative since its inception. He also serves on the national SEL Assessment Work Group team facilitated by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Calhoun began his career as a secondary mathematics teacher before moving to Fresno Unified’s REA office, where he directed program evaluations for both foundation- and USED grant-funded projects, developed and implemented a performance-based assessment system, and managed state and district assessment programs.

• @LPI_Learning
• Channa Cook-Harvey is the Director of Social-Emotional Learning at the Folsom Cordova Unified School District (FCUSD), where she works to strengthen FCUSD’s efforts to educate the whole child. Previously, she was a Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, where she led complex qualitative education research studies focused on social and emotional learning, whole child approaches to schooling, and trauma-informed practices. Cook-Harvey began her career in education as a high school English teacher and literacy coach in Los Angeles, and she co-founded and served as Principal of Sojourner Truth Academy in New Orleans.

• @OUSDNews
• Salomeh Ghorban is a Community Schools Manager at Roosevelt Middle School in the Oakland Unified School District. She previously served as the Positive Culture Manager at Roosevelt Middle School, where she helped to implement several school climate programs. Ghorban has also worked as a College Career Advisor for the Oakland Public Education Fund, which coordinates the investment of community resources in essential programs for Oakland's public schools. She is also involved in the Oakland chapter of the Teachers Guild.

• @WestEd
• Thomas Hanson is Director of WestEd's Health & Justice Program, where he conducts rigorous research on the effectiveness of programs, products, and practices intended to improve student outcomes. He is Principal Investigator of two large-scale randomized controlled trials funded by the National Institute of Justice, and also serves as lead methodologist for several studies examining the impacts of education interventions. Hanson has extensive experience in developing and validating survey instruments designed to measure school climate and other outcomes.

• @SupportGateway
• Suzanne Herko is a founding teacher of Gateway Middle School, a charter school that is part of Gateway Public Schools in San Francisco Unified School District. She teaches 7th grade humanities and learning seminar and coordinates their professional development on student agency. Gateway Public Schools were founded with the mission to prepare students for both college and career not only by providing a challenging academic program but also by developing students' social-emotional and metacognitive skills as learners. During her 25-year teaching career, Herko has had the privilege of working with students from grades 6 - 12 in San Francisco, New York City, and Quito, Ecuador.

• @TarynIshida
• Taryn Ishida is the Executive Director of the grassroots youth-powered organization Californians For Justice (CFJ). For over 10 years, she has supported CFJ to actualize its mission of racial justice by building the power of youth, communities of color, immigrants, low-income families, and LGBTQ communities. As Executive Director, Ishida provides leadership in program and campaign strategy, development and outreach, alliance building and policy, and management and operations. Prior to joining CFJ, she worked at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

• @brent_malicote
• Brent Malicote is the Director of the Professional Learning Support Division at the California Department of Education. He began his career as a teacher with the Havasupai Tribe located at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Later, Malicote moved to California and worked with a high percentage of English learners as a classroom teacher before becoming a site-level administrator and charter school director. From 2013 to 2016, Brent was the Principal at Pinewood Elementary School in El Dorado County, CA, and was recognized as Principal of the Year for El Dorado County in 2015.

• @PTHVP
• Yesenia Ramirez is the Training Coordinator for Parent Teacher Home Visits (PTHV). PTHV is a nonprofit that is working to build and sustain a national network of partners who effectively implement and advance a relationship-based home-visit model of family and teacher engagement in public schools. Ramirez is a founding parent of PTHV, and in her current role directs training for the national network. A longtime community advocate, she also serves on the board of Sacramento Area Congregations Together.

• @CalEndow
• Castle Redmond is a Program Manager for Schools at the California Endowment, where he is currently responsible for developing policy and funding strategies to improve health outcomes for young men of color in California. Previously, Redmond worked as a program manager overseeing the Juvenile Justice Center Wraparound Strategy at Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). He also served as a discipline hearing panel case manager for OUSD and participated in its first restorative justice pilot program. As Commissioner for Alameda County’s Human Relations Commission, Redmond co-led the Sexually Exploited Minors Task Force.

@LASchools @Transforming_Ed

Susan Ward Roncalli is a Social Emotional Learning Facilitator for the Division of Instruction with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). In this role, she and the other Facilitators use data to develop social-emotional learning implementation plans for 73 schools. Ward Roncalli has over 30 years of classroom experience, having served as a teacher, Service Learning Coordinator, and IMPACT Crisis Counselor at Eagle Rock High School. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Claremont Graduate University.