Change Leadership Group

Staff
Tony Wagner, Co-Director
Robert Kegan, Co-Director
Lisa Lahey, Associate Director
Deborah Helsing, Senior Program Associate
Kati Livingston, Assistant Director
Richard Lemons, Senior Consultant


Hawai'i Change Leaders Project Faculty

Karen Aka
Art Kaneshiro
Kyle Shodai

Tony Wagner

tony_wagner@harvard.edu
Tony Wagner has served as Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since its inception in 2000. He is also on the faculty of the Executive Leadership Program for Educators, a joint initiative of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Business School, and Kennedy School of Government. Tony consults widely to public and independent schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally and has been Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the past nine years. Tony has worked for more than thirty-five years in the field of school improvement, and he is a frequent keynote speaker and widely published author on education and society. Prior to assuming his current position at Harvard, Tony was a high school teacher for twelve years; a school principal; a university professor in teacher education; co-founder and first executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility; project director for the Public Agenda Foundation in New York; and President and CEO of the Institute for Responsive Education. He earned his a Masters of Arts in Teaching and Doctorate in Education at Harvard University. Tony’s publications include numerous articles and four books. Tony's latest book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—And What We Can do About It has just been published by Basic Books. His other titles include: Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools, Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools, and How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited.
You can find some of Tony's recent publications by clicking here.

Robert Kegan
robert_kegan@harvard.edu
Robert Kegan, Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group, is the Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research and writing looks at the possibility of continued psychological development in adulthood; and its necessity if professionals are to deliver on the complex challenges inherent in 21st century work. Kegan is the author of The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development; In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life; and (with Lisa Laskow Lahey), How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including four honorary doctorates and the Massachusetts Psychological Association's Teacher of the Year award, he is also co-director of a joint program undertaken by the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education to bring principles of adult learning to the reform of medical education; and Educational Chair of Harvard's Institute for Management and Leadership in Education. A former junior and senior high school English teacher, Kegan is also an airplane pilot, a rabid poker fan, and the unheralded inventor of ìthe Base Average, a more comprehensive statistic for gauging a player's offensive contributions in baseball.

Click here to see some of Bob's recent publications.

Lisa Lahey
lisa_lahey@harvard.edu
Lisa is Associate Director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her current professional interests focus on adult development within school districts, and tightly connecting individual development with district-wide goals for improved student performance. Lisa coaches leaders on how to create, facilitate and maintain conditions to support individual, group and organizational development. She also coaches individuals and groups on transforming communications for improved collaboration, work performance and decision-making. She has extensive experience in designing and facilitating processes that promote deep adult learning that serve organizational goals.

Lisa's clients have included: Lexington Public Schools; Acton Public Schools; The Fleet Initiative for Boston Public Schools; The Winsor School; McKinsey & Company; Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning; and The Dalton School. She is co-founder and senior consultant at MINDS AT WORK, a consulting firm specializing in school and workplace learning in the U.S. and Europe. A former principal and high school teacher, Lisa has also taught extensively in graduate school programs in several Boston area schools and professional development programs. Co-author of numerous articles on adult development, Lisa's first book, How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation (co-authored with Robert Kegan,) was published by Jossey Bass in 2001. She earned her M.Ed. and Ed.D. in human development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Deborah Helsing
deborah_helsing@gse.harvard.edu
Deborah is a post-doctoral fellow at the Change Leadership Group, having completed her doctoral degree in the area of Learning and Teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In her dissertation, she considered how teachers experience uncertainties in their work, examining the ways that teachers' internal characteristics and their school contexts contribute to their stances toward and strategies for addressing uncertainty. Recently, she has been involved in several projects related to promoting teachers' and school administrators' professional development: she has taught an Adult Development and Learning course as part of the Educational Leadership program at Framingham State University; she has written and co-taught a curriculum on the teaching of reading and writing for ABE/ESOL instructors as part of the Massachusetts Department of Education's pilot certification program; and she has worked for the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Writing, Research and Teaching Center to support the training, teaching, and career development of the school's teaching fellows. Deborah's background in teaching includes primary school TESOL instruction and teacher training in the Kingdom of Tonga, as well as images/secondary/ English literature and writing instruction at an alternative high school in Kansas City.

Kati Livingston
kathrine_livingston@harvard.edu
As Assistant Director of the Change Leadership Group Kati is responsible for overseeing client relations, business development and project management. She has experience in executive education programming for both business and non-profit leaders. Prior to joining CLG, Kati worked for several years at Programs in Professional Education at Harvard where she specialized in program management for adult professional development initiatives. She has also worked extensively with international students and executives on business English and acculturation issues.

Concurrent with her role at Harvard, Kati is a Consultant with RGoodman Associates, an organizational development firm serving clients in the private sector to support team effectiveness, high performance, alignment, and leadership team development. She is certified in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and uses this tool with individuals and teams to bring focus to communication dynamics and career exploration. Clients include Pfizer, Inc., Omgeo, New England Research Institute, and LASPAU at Harvard University. Kati holds a master's degree in adult development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a master's in art history from Pennsylvania State University.

Richard Lemons
richard.lemons@uconn.edu
Richard is a consultant to the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In the field of education, Richard has been a high school teacher, a community college administrator, a researcher, a literacy coach, and a change coach/consultant. His current research and professional interests revolve around the transformation of high schools, leadership development, and the large-scale improvement of teaching and learning. As a coach and consultant, Richard works with individual leaders and teams to assist them in being more reflective and strategic in their day-to-day professional practice. In addition, he works with schools and school districts to develop systems for and a practice of instructional improvement.

Richard's clients have included: Boston Public Schools & Boston Plan for Excellence (MA), Madison Independent School District (OH), Loveland Public Schools (OH), Jeremiah E. Burke HS (MA), Boston High School (MA), Central HS (RI), Mason HS (OH), Farmington Public Schools (CT), Farmington Valley Superintendent's Association (CT), The Connecticut Assistant Superintendent’s Association (CT), Pfizer, Inc., and Pick 'N Pay (South Africa). Richard is also the Senior Consultant for Leadership Development and School Improvement at the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) in Connecticut. Richard is the co-author of Leadership and the Demands of Standards-based Accountability," in The New Accountability: High Schools and High-Stakes Testing, published in 2003. He earned his M.Ed. and Ed.D. in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.



Hawai'i Change Leaders Project Faculty
Karen Aka
From the schoolhouse to the statehouse, Karen Aka has been involved in education and training for over thirty years. She spent the first eight years of her career as a special education teacher and supervisor in the inner city of Pittsburgh, PA. After moving to Hawai’i, she taught in a private school for Hawaiian/Part-Hawaiian students. This experience generated interest in indigenous, culturally congruent education. She was able to pursue that interest when she worked with a federally funded, educational laboratory in Honolulu that serves eight entities in Micronesia, American Samoa and Hawai’i. At the lab, her work expanded to education policy reform. In 1994, Karen began and successfully completed a two year collaborative effort to recodify the education chapter of the Hawai’i Revised Statutes into a coherent policy framework. The recodification was facilitated through the Chair of the State Senate Education Committee. She also served for two-terms as a Governor-appointed State Commissioner for the Education Commission of the States. Since 1996 she has been the President of her own company, Knowledge, Inc. Knowledge, Inc. provides training, facilitation, consultation, strategic planning and research to schools, school districts and various organizations. Her current work is focused on leadership development for public school principals. She is a faculty member of the Hawai’i Change Leadership Project that works with principals of K-12 feeder schools to develop Leadership Practice Communities. The intent is to leverage the collective genius of the group to maintain a laser focus on student performance and address the adaptive challenges they face as public educators. Additionally, she directs a Principals Leadership Academy that provides public school principals time and space to explore and define their personal and professional vision for leadership. Through school-business partnerships, principals experience external perspectives that challenge them to think in new and different ways. The academy serves as venue to support and promote change leadership.

Art Kaneshiro
Art is a faculty member of the Hawai'i Change Leadership Project. After spending 36 years with the Department of Education, Hawai'i, he is recently retired. During his tenure he held numerous school, district and state level positions and was recognized as a National Distinguished Principal in 1984. He did not start out pursuing education as a career but became interested in teaching while stationed in South Korea conducting conversational English classes for Korean high school students during his off duty hours. Today he continues to be in contact with a few of his original students, one who immigrated to the United States and presently lives in Hawai'i. His educational interests are beginning literacy in children and adults; organizational change, and organizational leadership. His interests also include reading, woodwork, making minor household repairs and helping the terminally ill and their survivors as a hospice volunteer.

Kyle Shodai
Kyle Shodai is a faculty member of the Hawai’i Change Leaders Project. Prior to becoming a member of the Hawai’i Faculty, Kyle was a high school teacher and a resource teacher in the Hawai’i Department of Education. Most recently his work as the High School Redesign coordinator at Aiea High School focused on implementing Small Learning Communities that help students make the transition into high school and then from grade-specific academies into career pathways relevant to their interests. His current professional interests focus on developing learning communities among adults in education and examining the rigor of professional conversations that occur among them in group settings. Some of his current work focuses on establishing learning communities among novice teachers at Kalani High School, developing competencies for effective collaboration in new members of School Community Councils on Kauai, sustaining and growing learning communities at Kaimuki Middle School that focus on improving instruction through differentiation, and studying the implementation of Leadership Practice Communities among Complex Area Superintendents and principals in the Hawai’i Change Leaders Project.