VALBRUN CONSULTING - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Chief of Staff
• Member of the Core Team

Job Titles:

• Leader
• Member of the Core Team
• Senior Consultant

Dr. Amalio Nieves is an experienced leader with more than 30 years of leadership in large urban school districts, including Chicago, Broward County, and Boston. Nieves has successfully led initiatives aimed at fostering and sustaining organizational commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and ensuring high-quality equitable educational opportunities for all students. His expertise includes the development and coordination of innovative strategies designed to integrate equity and the instructional knowledge of social emotional learning (SEL) using a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) model. Nieves is also experienced in the design and implementation of SEL and wellness for culturally, linguistically, and abilities-diverse student populations. He has extensive experience in strategy, leadership, and partnership development, and a successful track record at helping educational systems promote equity and inclusive practices to ensure students' academic, behavioral, and social/emotional well-being.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Core Team
• Senior Consultant

Job Titles:

• Member of the Core Team
• Senior Consultant

Job Titles:

• Member of the Core Team
• Operations Manager

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Founder
• Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Valbrun Consulting Group

Prior to founding her company, she was a school and district leader, director of professional learning at Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), and executive director of organizational management with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. She is a strategic partner to The Winter's Group, Inc. and FourPoint Educational Partners, and serves as an executive board member of Teach for Haiti. Valbrun is an Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Qualified Administrator and holds a certificate as a Facilitative Leader for Social Change. The daughter of first-generation immigrants, Valbrun is passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, and she brings that lens to every organization with which she works. Valbrun notes that a constant over her long career has been the disproportionate opportunities afforded to marginalized groups. "As a classroom teacher to a business owner, I am interested in not only bringing light to this as an imperative, but to also help light a pathway to change through the work we do with teachers, leaders, and school systems," she says. Valbrun cares about meeting people and organizations where they are, which requires creating opportunities for reflective practice, recognizing one's own lived experiences and unpacking personal privilege and trauma. This self-work is important for knowing and understanding the experience of others in order to build relationships across differences, and to lead others on their journey. She started this company because she has been on the receiving end of a classroom that was not designed with her racial or cultural difference in mind, and she has led a school that also faced a racial academic divide. "Through opportunities for personal development of individuals working with students and leading systems, we hope to effect impactful and lasting change that disrupts the systems that have not traditionally worked for all," Valbrun says. The Valbrun Consulting Group's services are for those wanting to move to real solutions. Valbrun strives to be an accessible partner doing shoulder-to-shoulder work with clients-delivering customized solutions to help clients get to the goals they set. Valda Valbrun is the founder and chief executive officer of The Valbrun Consulting Group. As an established educational leader with three decades in the education space, she is known for her passion for inclusive, research-based, and data-driven pedagogy. She is a system change facilitator with a proven track record of supporting organizations in transforming their practices to facilitate achievement.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Core Team
• Director of Strategic Planning for Charlotte - Mecklenburg Schools
• Senior Consultant, Strategic Planning

Shauna Bell is formerly the director of strategic planning for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, where she was responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of strategic planning by aligning the work of the organization and developing a performance management process. In that role, she led the organization through the development of its most recent strategic plan by organizing and executing community engagement events and focus groups, and then synthesizing data to provide direction for the work. Bell is a former Broad Resident (2013), with experience as a teacher and a career counselor in a high school and as an engineer for Procter & Gamble. She is a graduate of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, FL, where she received a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and a master of science in industrial engineering. She also received a master of business administration from Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, Georgia, and a master of education in educational leadership from The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems.