Speaking Opportunities

This past school year of learning with current and future executive directors across the nation has been a great experience for my growth as a leader! Without going into a lot of detail on the specific activities and processes, I was able to meet multiple times throughout the year with education and industry professional on various leadership topics that you don’t get in your formal education training. The conversations focused around real-world scenarios and topics that only experience can truly provide.

In September, the group was able to join other education leaders in Washington D.C. to visit elected officials and their staff to talk through the great things, and some of the concerns, that we are happening in the state of Texas. Feeling heard and having a voice to share on behalf of the schools and their students was pretty powerful!

Then in March, I was blessed to be able to spend an entire one-week residence at an ESA (ESC in Texas) in Wisconsin. Shadowing the executive director and meeting with leadership of each individual program throughout the week gave me a great insight into how others work within their state. I brought back a lot of ideas to share with our team and was proud to share some of the great things we are doing here at ESC Region 11.

The final meeting took place at the Summer Leadership Conference where I not only was recognized for my participation in the cohort, but I was also selected to present a session to the entire attending body versus a breakout with only a select few. I felt honored to be part of such a great group of educators and will learn back on this experience as my careers continues to grow and move forward.

And…we are back in Washington D.C. again! Just under a year later, my executive director and I had the opportunity to once again visit the FCC at our nation’s capital to talk about the benefits of the work our team had done with our FIBER11 project.

I won’t go into too much detail here. All I can say is that I was super proud to be here the first time, and the second trip only validated the work that we had done to get to this point. The program continues to expand each and every funding year and more and more students are served in locations that were once thought to be non-economical when looking exclusively at the ROI. I know the return that we are getting by giving students access to online tools, virtual field trips, and other resources that were once not possible due to bandwidth limitations.

Needless to say…we made it happen!

It seems like just a few months ago, my team and I were visiting Washington D.C. to accept the CoSN Texas Team of the Year award for our work on FIBER11. I guess that is because we were doing that back in March just 6 months prior. Now I here reporting on another trip to the nation’s capital on an invitation to present the FIBER11 project, deemed “The Model of What E-rate Can Do”, to members of the FCC!

Needless to say, I was speechless when I was invited up to visit and speak on behalf of the work that our team accomplished through this project. Not only did we garner some local and state attention during the process, we also turned an eye at the national level for the innovative work to bring high-speed connectivity to our furthest rural schools in a way that was cost-effective and provided the necessary connectivity for all students in locations that were underserved.

The day was full of meetings with various FCC commissioners, staff, and even USAC (department who runs the E-rate program). It was long, tiresome, and extremely rewarding to share my team’s work. I thought originally that receiving the award in D.C. six months ago might be the highlight of 2018. I’m pretty sure that this one just took over that spot. What a cool experience! It only left me thinking one thing…how do we top this one now? 🙂