Born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised a clam shell’s throw across the border in Massachusetts, Daniela grew up calling both states home. (It didn’t hurt that the best chowdah came from Rhody and the best baseball team from Boston.) She kept her hometown pride alive through college, graduating cum laude from Tufts University and then working as a high school teacher for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities in Boston.
While at The Compass School, Daniela remapped curricula for the school’s ELA and social studies courses and led the outdoor education program. She also experienced firsthand the frustrations of working within a broken K–12 system.
Fed up with that system, Daniela went back to school to gain the policy know-how needed to help make it easier for quality teachers to inspire students. In 2009, she graduated with an MSEd from the University of Pennsylvania. After Penn, Daniela worked as a global development fellow evaluating a USAID project in Burkina Faso before settling at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
At Fordham, Daniela learned a ton about education policy and reform, curating the organization’s weekly e-magazine, The Education Gadfly Weekly; spearheading its development efforts and managing and producing a host of research and policy projects, including the e-book “Education Reform for the Digital Era” and the brief “Financing the Education of High-Needs Students.”
In mid-2013, Daniela left Fordham to travel the world. Fifteen countries, five continents and thousands of pictures later, Daniela landed at 50CAN. Here she uses her policy chops and on-the-ground experience to help the doers do: building the knowledge and skill base of our EDs and expanding the breadth and efficacy of 50CAN U.
I aspire to be like John Lewis. Here’s why:
In his memoir “Walking With the Wind,” John Lewis (the civil-rights leader and Georgia congressman—not the labor leader, pianist or department store) wrote: “We must love the unloveable. Love the Hell out of them…If there is Hell in someone, if there is meanness and anger and hatred in him, we’ve got to love it out.”
Lewis embodied that message—and then some. As a Freedom Rider, he was beaten unconscious when the KKK firebombed his bus in Anniston, Alabama. He was gassed and billy clubbed on the Selma to Montgomery March. But he remained pacifistic, while never losing his edge to push against the hell he saw. Read the original text from his March on Washington speech for one example. He spoke just before King went on stage.
I get to put my hands in all the jars of 50CAN’s work, blending teaching, policy and advocacy. Even better, I get to work directly with the state executive directors and others passionate about doing real work to improve real schools in real places. Plus I’ve got some pretty cool coworkers.
I’ve spent 19 years of my life in public schools—first as a K–12 student, then as a special-education teacher, and finally as a high school rowing coach for District of Columbia Public Sschools. Each experience has offered me different insights, from understanding how varied expectations and unsafe schools hurt learning to how national, state and local policies affect the classroom. And even today, as I work in the policy and advocacy realm, my brother, a high school science teacher, keeps me grounded in the day-to-day of the classroom.
Singing. It’s genetic; my whole family is terrible. About a decade ago, we bought one of those candle holders that plays the “Happy Birthday” tune instead of singing. And we’ve used it at every cake cutting since. Of course, singing ability aside, I’m still boss at ‘N Sync bar karaoke.
My mother’s parents—my babci and dziadziu—met at Altenstadt, a displaced-persons camp in Germany, sometime after WWII. They came to the U.S. in 1951 with almost no education (and certainly no English) and worked in factories their whole lives. They also raised three kids, who, together, earned two master’s degrees and an MBA. They helped give me the opportunities that brought me to 50CAN and the hard-working ethos needed to reach my goals. This photo reminds me of my roots, how important education has been to my family, and—more broadly—the transformative power of a quality education.