Yeah

... yeah, now just a little backstory on that just briefly here.

I think it was probably 2003, I was sitting in my office at my district I was in at that time and, and I said, "I want to get a vanity plate." And the lady who was assistant superintendent for curriculum instructions, she said, "To educate." And I was like, "Well, we can't put all those words on a license plate." She was like, "No, to educate." And she was very creative and I thought, "Oh my God, this is so great," because I think it speaks to fundamentally who I see myself as, someone who through the role of superintendency is to educate kids.

So, so the core mission of, of 2EDUK8 then is grounded in, in that belief that education is transforming and transcendent and, and that leadership matters.

And so, so when I think about executive coaching work that I'm doing is focus on identifying those, those strategies to help leaders level up, not only level up from the standpoint of, of getting the next position, but truly leveling up in terms of, of being more impactful.

And, and to me that's, that's a key piece of that is, of leadership.

Even when I think about leadership development teams and working with different teams is focus on, on a system side leadership, how do we systematize the thing that we do? How do we systematize success, right? And repeatable success should always be our goal as, as a system, as, as a system leaders, right? And that's embedded in the whole notion then of, of trying to get synergy of efforts, making sure everybody's on the same page, same time, focused on the same thing.

But where do you think AI and these emergent technologies will strengthen leadership decision-making in the context of performance management and systems shifting to modernize the operating model in what I call the AC stage of education after COVID-19?

So when applying to education and leadership in particular, how are they different? Can you tease that out a little bit for us?

Yeah, it's interesting.

I'm thinking of probably, who knows, maybe 15, 16 years ago, I was at a conference with some colleagues and the speaker asked the question in terms of what are the definitions of equity and inclusion? And if there were two, 300 people in a room, we would have gotten two, 300 different definitions of those terms.

Yes, they probably would have been similar somewhat, but it would have been different enough.

And that, at that point, made it clear to me that without a lack of shared definition, we also then see some of the misalignment and understanding and actions that we've seen over the years within schools.

And certainly in a political climate, often the terms equity and inclusion are aligned to gross movement to marginalize certain individuals based on race.

That's typically the center point of some of those terms.

So if someone were to be in a superintendent role or thinking about the superintendency or a different type of school administrator role, how would one assess that they might need help in the equity and inclusive leadership topic? What might they identify in their current practices that might make them stop and think, hmm, I might need some support here?

[laughs]

So clearly, being in New York City was not the place for me.

So long and short of it, that, that brought me to a, a first of many turning points in life that I had decided, okay, what am I gonna do next? So I actually went home back to Florida, and I had a great job situation with BellSouth, was a part of a leadership program.

And I literally had, like, two weeks home before this leadership program start.

I stopped by a friend of mine whose father was the first principal of Alternative High School for Palm Beach County Schools.

And he asked me to stop by the school on that Monday, and I stopped by, and that Monday turned my entire career 'cause I stayed there for two weeks helping these kids out, and I realized, oh my God, this is absolutely amazing.

Because as a student, you see, you see education from one side, but then seeing it from the other side, and also then seeing the impact of changing the lives of young people who've, again, lost confidence in schools because, quite frankly, too many school systems weren't designed for them.

Like, how do you view that whole thing?