Our Story

LDC began as a community of educators determined to eliminate achievement gaps by providing all students with the same rigorous writing assignments that privileged kids already receive. Today, LDC creates assignments for most K-12 major content areas. LDC also provides professional support to help teachers adapt their practices and inject more rigor in their everyday classroom instruction. As a result, students who complete LDC assignments are up to 9 months ahead  in their learning compared to students who do not have access to LDC Real Works Modules.

 

Our Core Principles

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Rigor

The CCRS mandates rigor in instruction and LDC assignments show teachers and students just what that rigor looks and sounds like in reading and writing.

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Learn by Doing

LDC professional learning enables teachers to learn while doing their work–planning, teaching, and evaluating the efficacy of their instruction. 

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Authenticity

LDC assignments demand that students think, read, and write in the ways experts and professionals do.

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High Expectations

LDC believes in students and finds that with the right support, all students can rise to the occasion.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

LDC is a community of educators that fosters educational equity by expanding access to culturally-responsive, standards-aligned, rigorous assignments and instruction. The American public education system was designed to neglect many historically oppressed communities, resulting in disproportionately poor outcomes for marginalized groups. Furthermore, we acknowledge that – despite our organization’s mission and intent – we need to continuously improve the way we do our work and continuously measure our impact to ensure that we are not contributing to such unacceptable outcomes.  

Accordingly, to ensure that our work even more meaningfully addresses the opportunity gap in student learning and achievement, we strive every day to center diverse perspectives that prioritize an intentional integration of voices, representation, and equity in our curriculum, teacher professional learning experiences, and in the work of LDC in general.   

User-centered design that includes previously marginalized student and teacher representation means actively integrating those students and teachers into our instructional design process (which heretofore we’ve done with varying degrees of success).  We aspire to achieve this vision through implementation of these measurable goals:

  • Increase the amount of text used in our curricular resources written by authors of color, women, and other marginalized voices by 40%
  • Increase the amount of LDC-created curricular resources authored by people of color, women, and other marginalized voices by 40%
  • Increase internal LDC team organization diversity through intentional hiring practices 
  • Increase LDC board member diversity through intentional recruitment 
  • Utilize feedback processes from community partners to identify areas of growth in terms of content related to DEI 
  • Prioritize staff professional development regarding DEI initiatives in education

Our Team

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Sabrina Alicea

Director, Curriculum Development

Sabrina comes to LDC with an extensive background in education—most recently focusing on middle school literacy and social studies. As a curriculum designer, Sabrina has worked to integrate high-quality, culturally-relevant texts, tasks, and resources for students and teachers alike.
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Andrea Fullington

Associate Director, Curriculum Development

Andrea is an educator and community servant based in New Orleans. Over her 14 year stint as a classroom teacher, she taught in high schools in Colorado, Boston, and Philadelphia, before landing in New Orleans.
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Rob Kasher

Chief Program Officer

Rob believes that the key to dismantling educational inequity is to develop a system of empowered leaders—including teachers, instructional specialists, and administrators at every level—committed to providing all students with rigorous instruction.
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Jamie Keith

Associate Director, Professional Learning

Jamie joins LDC with a passion for educational equity and systems change through adult learning, with over 6 years of experience developing high-quality professional learning experiences. Jamie’s background includes instructional coaching across 14 K-12 schools in San Jose, California during their time with City Year and designing online courses for undergraduate students at 4 universities nationally during their time at Braven.
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Lydia Mantis

Associate Director, Curriculum Development

Lydia is an experienced educator who believes that high-quality, engaging instruction can prepare and inspire students to act upon the world around them. Lydia’s background includes classroom teaching and curriculum design in the Bronx and in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago.
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Chadae McAnuff

Manager, Program Development

Chadae believes education is liberating and creating high quality instruction for all students, especially those at the margins of society, is inextricably linked to social justice. As a New York native, who also taught in NYC public schools, Chadae brings with her diverse teaching practices and uses culturally responsive pedagogy as her orientation towards teaching and learning.
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Dr. Dwight Nolt

Director, District Leadership

Dr. Nolt holds both B.S. and M.S. degrees in English Education from Millersville University, Principal Certification in Educational Leadership from Penn State University, and an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Sheri Roedel

Federal Grant Manager, Los AnGeles

Sheri Roedel comes to LDC with over 25 years of experience in education. Sheri is focused on educational equity as the lever for transformative change. She firmly believes that rigorous instruction, paired with culturally responsive teaching practices, have a direct impact on student success in and outside of school.
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Jabari Sellars

Associate Director, Curriculum Development

Jabari joins LDC with over a decade of middle school and high school classroom teaching experience in both literature and history. As a curriculum designer and teacher education facilitator, Jabari has worked with educators and school systems to increase student engagement through the thoughtful use of popular culture media in k-12 curriculum. Jabari earned his Master's degree in education at Harvard University, where he received the Intellectual Contribution Award for his work with comics and graphic novels in literacy education.
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Chad Vignola

Executive Director

Member, Board of Directors

Chad has worked in public education and public service for over 30 years, spinning LDC off from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s primary common core implementation grant-making strategy in order to create a national edtech hub for innovation and school transformation in effectively delivering—and measuring—rigorous instructional classroom practice.
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Maya Welch

Associate Director, Program Development

Maya is an educator and lifelong learner dedicated to the development of impactful curriculum. She believes that providing support to educators and the implementation of rigorous and culturally-responsive curriculum for students is at the heart of dismantling inequity in education.
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Nephi Wright

Principal Software Developer

Nephi began his career in 2004 building eLearning and business simulation software. He used his ability to learn quickly and work with teams to convert instructional designers’ concepts and content into educational web applications.
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Senior Advisors

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Danielle Brewer

Senior Advisor

As LDC's Director, Operations and Impact, Danielle's work focused on guiding the cross-functional and strategic work of the LDC team to drive the translation of data from LDC and external sources into compelling products and services.
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Megan Jensen

Former Director, Instruction and Program Impact

Senior Advisor

As LDC's Director, Instruction and Program Impact, Megan ensured that LDC’s curriculum and implementation materials effectively supported school systems across the United States in delivering authentic and standards-driven instruction to all students.
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Dr. Lanette Jimerson

Senior Advisor

Dr. Lanette Jimerson has provided strategic guidance to LDC for years, primarily working to support the quality of resources and professional learning experiences LDC provides to educators related to using student work rubrics. She is the founder and CEO of The Literate Self, and has over 20 years of experience helping equity-minded leaders bring forth their ideas through writing.
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Dr. Barrie Olson

Former Chief Academic Officer

Senior Advisor

Barrie believes in the power of educators to maximize the potential of all students. She believes that in every American classroom is a future scientist, a future pulitzer prize winner, a future novelist.
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Nicole Barrick Renner

Senior Advisor

As LDC's Director, Curriculum and Assessment, Nicole's work focused on ensuring that LDC’s curriculum and assessments provide rigorous, equitable, and scaffolded experiences for all students.
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Heather Sampselle

Senior Advisor

Heather is a passionate and forward-thinking lover of education. She taught at elementary schools in Florida and Maryland and brought to LDC a variety of experiences to the table.
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Dr. Suzanne Simons

Senior Advisor

Suzanne’s leadership work has focused on building sustainable equity across public educational systems in order to ensure parity of access for all teachers and students.
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Board of Directors

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John Katzman, Chair

Chief Executive Officer, Noodle Education

John Katzman is an education entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of The Noodle Companies, an education startup whose search engine helps students and parents find educational resources and schools.
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Tanya Baker

Director, National Programs, National Writing Project

As Director of National Programs at National Writing Project, Tanya oversees a wide range of cooperative research and program development initiatives involving NWP’s university-based local sites. An author of Strategic Reading: Guiding Students to Lifelong Literacy 6-12 (Heinemann, 2001), Tanya has direct Board-reporting responsibilities for this national organization.

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Randy Mastro

Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Randy M. Mastro, a partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is Co-Chair of the firm’s Litigation Practice Group. He also serves on the firm’s Management and Executive Committees. He routinely ranks among the nation’s leading litigators and trial lawyers in surveys of corporate counsel and other practitioners. As NYC firm head, Randy represents numerous Fortune 500 (and several 100) corporations. Randy sits on numerous national corporate and charitable boards and foundations.

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Marla Ucelli–Kashyap

Assistant to the President for Educational Issues, American Federation of Teachers

Marla Ucelli-Kashyap is Assistant to the President for Educational Issues at the 1.6 million member American Federation of Teachers, where she leads a team of professionals working on key areas of policy, practice and professional development aimed at helping teachers and their unions improve education quality and their profession. Previously, she was Director of District Redesign and Leadership at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University and a senior program officer at the Rockefeller Foundation. Ms. Ucelli-Kashyap has also been an independent consultant in education policy, a political press secretary, and a reporter. She holds a B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa graduate) from New York University and an M.P.A. from Rutgers. Among her professional service activities, Ms. Ucelli-Kashyap was Chair of the Board of Editorial Projects in Education, Inc. (publisher of Education Week) and was a founding Co-chair of Grantmakers for Education.

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Harlan Waksal

President and Chief Executive Officer, Kadmon Holdings, Inc.

Dr. Waksal has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Kadmon Holdings, Inc. since August 2014. Prior to Kadmon, Dr. Waksal served as Executive Vice President of Business and Scientific Affairs at Acasti Pharma, Inc., a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company, and as a consultant to Neptune Technologies & Bioressources, Inc., a publicly traded life sciences company and the parent company of Acasti. Dr. Waksal co-founded ImClone Systems (ImClone) in 1987, a publicly traded biopharmaceutical company acquired by Eli Lilly and Company in 2008, serving as President, CEO, and Director. Dr. Waksal has a long history in post-secondary education, teaching as an adjunct medical school professor for over ten years, as well as serving for over ten years as a distinguished Trustee of Oberlin College. Dr. Waksal will bring this university expertise to LDC's delivery of college-ready rigorous educational products and services.

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Carl-Anthony Watson

Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education

Carl-Anthony Watson is an educational consultant supporting schools, districts/networks and organizations in the following areas: operational management, organizational design, leadership development and inquiry-based improvement. Previously, Dr. Watson has served as chief operating officer at various educational nonprofit networks where he has led school-based operations, human resources, talent acquisition, student recruitment, board relations and financial management. His experience includes founding an all-boys elementary school in New York City, shepherding a school turnaround initiative that changed the trajectory of three failing large secondary schools, coaching school districts across the country in developing their leadership pipelines of principals and teaching high school English in Washington, DC. Dr. Watson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Temple University, a Master of Public Administration degree in Public and Nonprofit Management and Policy from New York University and a Doctorate in Educational and Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Dr. Watson is a certified and practicing Emergency Medical Technician in New York State.

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Dana Moloney

Board Secretary & Grants Administrator

Dana currently serves as the Secretary to the Board of Directors and Grants Administrator at LDC, ensuring the continual drive towards efficiency and progress within the organization. She came to LDC with ample experience in Project Management, graduating with an advanced diploma from the NYU School of Professional Studies in 2015. In 2017, Dana’s passion for the intersection between Operations Management and Social Impact led her to LDC, where she served as the Finance and Operations Manager until 2019. She has since served as a Finance & Operations Associate, and later Manager, at the Global Impact Investing Network, an organization that works towards increasing investments into organizations and companies that champion positive change across the world. In her free time, Dana volunteers as the Director of Finance for the Project Management Institute of New York City, where she works to bring together other professionals in the area who share her passion in Project Management. She also received a Project Management Professional certificate from the organization.

Our Partners

Careers

Are you passionate about helping teachers prepare students for success in college and in their careers? Do you want to play a key part in this important work? To apply for a job at Literacy Design Collaborative, send a cover letter and your résumé to the email address listed in the job posting. Candidates who closely fit the qualifications will be contacted for an interview.