Dr. Liliana Polo-McKenna
Dr. Liliana Polo-McKenna, EdLD, is the executive director of the Responsive Design team at the Bank Street Education Center. With over 25 years of experience as an educator and workforce leader, Liliana has worked with local, state, and national leaders and teams to expand what is possible in education. Liliana was the founding principal of West Brooklyn Community High School, a transfer school in the same neighborhood where she was born and raised. Liliana also served as Vice President of School Leadership Support at the Leadership Academy and Technical Advisor at FHI 360, where she coached, designed, and facilitated professional development for district- and school-level leaders across the country. Liliana was chief program officer and chief executive officer of Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow, one of New York City’s largest youth education and workforce development nonprofits. Liliana founded a professional learning consulting firm, Leading from Within, through which she was coach and facilitator with Latinos for Education and Seattle Public Schools. She also serves as board president of the Malverne Afterschool Center and board secretary for Building 21, an innovative, competency-based high school in Philadelphia. Liliana has a Doctorate in Education Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a BA/MAT from Brown University.
Alexandra Anormaliza
Coach
Alexandra Anormaliza is a systems-level leader with three decades of experience in New York City Public Schools, where she was a teacher, principal, and central office leader. As Senior Advisor for Education in the NYC Mayor’s Office, she worked on the return of students and staff to in-person school after the COVID-19 pandemic closures and facilitated the creation and implementation of NYC’s Summer Rising program. In prior roles, she oversaw multiple school support teams to provide 160-plus schools with operational and instructional assistance and led system-wide professional development programs to improve instruction. As a consultant, Alexandra has coached district and state education department leaders to improve the design of their summer learning programs and engage in continuous improvement, with an emphasis on strengthening instructional quality. Alexandra’s experience in schools and with schools is wide ranging, including significant work supporting multi-lingual learners. Having created multiple organizations from the ground up, Alexandra is expert at program design and incorporating systemic improvements over time.
George Badía
Coach
Born in New York and raised in Puerto Rico, George Badía is an experienced educator with a strong background in educational leadership. After completing his high school and college education in the United States, he earned a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from Russell Sage College. With over three decades of service in the New York City Department of Education, George has made significant contributions to the institutions he has worked with. George began his career as a Spanish and bilingual social studies teacher at John Adams High School. He later served as the assistant principal of ESL and Foreign Language at the same school. He then took on the role of assistant principal at Pan American International at Monroe Campus in the Bronx, continuing his commitment to improving educational outcomes for students. As principal of Pan American International High School in Queens, George led a remarkable transformation, improving attendance, academics, and safety. Under his leadership, the graduation rate increased from 50 percent in 2014 to 95 percent in 2021, and the school progressed from a Renewal School to a School in Good Standing. In addition to his roles in school leadership, George Badia served as a coach for Project Soaring with the Internationals Network for Public Education. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College, two master’s degrees—one from Columbia University and another in School Administration from New York University—and the completion of his doctoral candidate program at Sage College.
Tabari Bomani
Coach
Born and raised in Hollis, Queens, Tabari Bomani has worked as a social studies teacher, college advisor, and dean in the New York City Department of Education for over 30 years. For 27 years, Tabari worked a social studies teacher, college advisor, and dean at Bushwick Community High School (BCHS), a transfer high school created to educate students who are over-aged and under-credited (labeled by the NYC DOE as drop-outs, pushed-outs, pregnant teens, etc.). While a teacher at BCHS, Tabari also worked for the New Opportunities at Hofstra University Program, the Adolescent Vocational Educational Program for the Economic Commission of Nassau, and an adjunct professor in the African Studies Department at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York. Tabari has lectured and performed poetry for various community-based organizations, colleges, and universities. Tabari earned a BA in History and Secondary Education from Hofstra University and a MA in History from Brooklyn College. In 1987, Tabari was inducted into Phi Alpha Theta (the National History Honor Society), and in 2004, Tabari was a recipient of the Fund for the City of New York’s 2004 Sloan Public Service Award. In 2013, Tabari was selected to be a member of the Expanded Success Initiative New School Design Fellowship (ESI Fellows), charged with designing a new school model that would directly work to close the achievement gap, discipline gap, and belief gap that faced African and Latino youth in New York City Public Schools. After a year of design and prototyping, the ESI Fellows launched the EPIC Schools, and Tabari was selected to be the principal of the newly opened Nelson Mandela School for Social Justice On June 28 th , 2022, after thirty-four years of service, Tabari retired from the New York City Department of Education. Since retiring, Tabari has worked as an adjunct professor at City College, lectured for several organizations, has been a guest speaker on several podcasts, and is working on opening a consulting business.
Dr. Rod Bowen
Coach
Rod Bowen is an educational leader with over 30 years of experience in K-12 public education. Currently, he is a Program Director of Leadership Development with the School Empowerment Network, as well as an adjunct faculty member at Bank Street Graduate School of Education. He has served as Chief of High Schools and regional superintendent for a Charter Management Organization with schools across three states. Before that, he led the New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE) Office of Teacher Development in designing professional learning experiences for teachers and those who support them, with a focus on rigorous instruction and racial equity. He also led the NYCDOE’s Office of School Quality, providing schools across the city with invaluable feedback related to instruction, school culture, and structures for improvement. Before district-level leadership, Rod was the founding principal of the DreamYard Preparatory School, a small arts high school in the Bronx committed to cultivating scholarship, artistry, and character within its students. Rod completed his undergraduate studies at Brown University and holds two master’s degrees—one from City College of New York and the other from Pace University. He also earned his PhD from Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change and holds a permanent New York State certification as a district-level leader.
Thandi Center
Coach
Thandi Center has spent her career in public education and non-profit leadership with a focus on developing the capacity of teachers, school leaders, and system leaders. Currently, Thandi serves as the senior project director on the Responsive Design team at the Bank Street Education Center. Thandi also coaches high school principals as part of Bank Street’s Principal Innovation Fellowship. She has worked as an independent consultant with XQ Institute, the Urban Assembly, the District Summer Learning Network, the Deeper Learning Dozen, and Newark Board of Education. Thandi’s consulting work centers on helping school districts and education non-profits clarify and advance their strategic priorities, developing capacity and leadership across their organizations, creating systems for continuous improvement, authoring materials for aspiring educators, and anchoring equity in both process and outcomes. Previously, Thandi served as Vice President of Programs at the New Teacher Center (NTC), where she spent 10 years cultivating innovative district partnerships across New York City, Newark, and nationally. Prior to NTC, Thandi worked for New Visions for Public Schools to support the creation of dozens of new small high schools, and created human rights curricula as a contractor with Amnesty International, PBS, and Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility. Thandi began her career as a social studies teacher and school bus driver on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Julian Cohen
Coach
Julian Cohen is the founder of Shared Lane, an organization that builds professional capacity for high school educators to support young people to seamlessly transition to postsecondary training and in-demand careers. Shared Lane develops free resources to promote advising centered on career navigation. Through his career in New York City Public Schools, Julian has been a leader in school design and postsecondary readiness. As Director of the Office of New Schools, he supported the launch of over 250 new small schools, and as a founding member of the Office of Postsecondary Readiness—now Office of Student Pathways—he was the district’s representative on the design of P-TECH, and oversaw the Expanded Success Initiative, a component of the Young Men’s Initiative, to increase college access among Black and Latino young men. Julian has experience in workforce training at Per Scholas, where he led a small team that developed a Technology Careers Exploration Program for youth and teachers. Julian began his career as a founding teacher at Central Park East Secondary School, a pioneer of the small school movement, where he worked as an advisor to first generation college-bound students. Julian holds a teaching degree from Hunter College and a certificate from the Columbia Business School Executive Leadership Program for Senior Nonprofit Leaders.
Nancy Mann
Coach
Nancy Mann has over three decades of experience in school leadership in urban education. She began teaching at Central Park East Secondary School, a school known for its focus on performance assessment and a restructured school day. She was a cofounder of Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the East Tremont section of the Bronx in 1994, one of the first small schools in the Bronx, where she served as principal from 2002-14. From 2015-18, she was the deputy superintendent for a New York City Department of Education city-wide district of performance assessment schools. Her work with leadership programs includes the Summer Principals Academy at Teachers College and the P20 program at Bank Street College in collaboration with Rochester and Yonkers districts. In addition to her work with the Bank Street Principal Innovation Fellowship and the Bank Street Career Connected Curriculum Project, she continues to be a mentor to educators and principals in New York City.
John Widlund
Coach
John Widlund is a lifelong educator and a graduate of McKee High School in New York City. He has been a Leader in Career and Technical Education (CTE) for over 30 years, including as a teaching apprentice, (SVA at McKee CTE HS), assistant principal (McKee CTE HS), principal (George Westinghouse High School and The School of Cooperative Technical Education), and most recently as executive director of career and technical for over 100 schools and 70,000 students. He led the rapid expansion of 40 new CTE programs and supported the creation of the Brooklyn Steam Center with principal Kayon Pryce. His passion is helping schools design high-quality CTE and Future Ready programs, realizing the potential for a dual education that is academically rigorous and real world in nature. Since joining CEI in 2021, John has found a new home and role that is continuing to find solutions to the challenges our schools currently face.
Larry Woodbridge
Coach
Larry Woodbridge began his career in education as a social studies teacher at the McBurney School in 1982, where he also directed the school play. In 1998, he was selected to open the Community School at MS 142 and subsequently in 2003 became the first principal of the Secondary School for Law at John Jay High School (SSL). There, Mr. Woodbridge initiated a dedicated law-related curriculum, an expansion of Readers and Writers Workshop to the high school level, community partnerships that led to enhanced college counseling and social services, and building-wide AP classes. He also mentored aspiring principals for the Leadership Academy. In 2010, Larry left SSL to become one of the inaugural group of facilitators for the Leaders in Education Apprenticeship Program, the first in-house principal preparation program developed by the New York City Department of Education. From 2013-21, he led the principal preparation program team in the Office of Leadership and ultimately became the office’s senior executive director. Larry has been a Klingenstein Fellow and a Cahn Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University.
