For the past 25 years I have been a teacher and innovator of educational programs K-college. I have been an advocate for literacy development of both mother tongue and English as an Additional Language (EAL). I have served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya and Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Jordan in Amman. I hold a certificate for Advanced Educational Leadership from Harvard and graduated with a doctorate in Applied Linguistics from Columbia University. While teaching in both US and overseas schools, I earned the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) certificate for English as a New Language. Issues I am passionate about equity in education, using evidence for improved teaching, and driving change in educational settings to bridge the learning gap between groups of students. I believe that equity in education begins through collaborative efforts of teachers, parents, and administrators who lead as change makers in our communities. I specialize in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, as well as methods in second language acquisition. I have taught and presented on issues of education in the US, Italy, United Kingdom, Kenya, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. In addition to teaching, I am a writer and researcher. I have over seven years of professional technical writing and editing experiences in the area of telecommunications and other development projects. Writing activities have included accreditation documents for schools, proposal writing, feasibility studies, design specifications, and pre-qualification documents. As a bilingual who has studied languages wherever I lived, I am adept at working on multicultural teams. I have led a number of educational initiatives focused on literacy development to include projects in Design Thinking and Mother Tongue programs. Over the course of my journey as a writer and educator, I have won a grant for a school-to-work program involving corporate mentors for at-risk and multilingual learners in a public school and have created programs at international schools involving multiple stakeholders from the community. I seek collaborative designs for educational reform, opening classrooms to community rich resources.