SANTA ANA – Think Together, California’s leading nonprofit provider of school improvement, expanded learning and afterschool programs, announced Thursday, Oct. 6, it hired four new leaders to its program and field operations teams: Susan Metcalf, executive general manager of program operations; Jacqueline Licardie as executive general manager of field operations; Jesse Durkin as general manager of Santa Fe Springs region and Christopher Miree as general manager of Riverside County region.
Each of these leaders have extensive experience within the K-12 education and expanded learning spaces and come to Think Together amid ongoing expansion due to new and renewed investments from state, federal and private channels.
“As Think Together continues to experience tremendous growth in the expanded learning space, we are excited to welcome these new leaders to the organization,” Randy Barth, founder and CEO of Think Together, said. “This kind of infusion of external talent will help Think Together usher in another 25 years of serving more than 2 million students in need of academic and enrichment support.”
Metcalf will oversee data and evaluation, family and community engagement as well as purchasing and production. Metcalf began her two-decade career in public education as an English and English Language Development teacher for eight years. After teaching, Metcalf became a site administrator for the next 12 years, including serving as an elementary and middle school principal.
Licardie joins Think Together leading field operations of the organization’s San Bernardino, San Gabriel Valley and southeast Los Angeles and Orange County regions. Licardie comes to Think Together from After-School All-Stars where she most recently served as the interim CEO. Before her role at After-School All-Stars, she held various program roles including traveling supervisor and program coach for LA’s BEST.
Durkin will lead the Santa Fe Springs region, which currently serves students enrolled in Think Together afterschool and expanded learning programs in Bassett Unified, El Rancho Unified, Little Lake City School District and Mountain View School District in El Monte. Durkin comes to Think Together from City Year, where as the senior program director he oversaw city year’s in-class and expanded learning programs at 25 LAUSD schools, managing six directors, 25 managers and more than 400 full-time AmeriCorps members over four years.
Miree will serve as one of two general managers leading the organization’s Riverside County region. Miree spent his entire career serving students within the afterschool and youth program sector holding a variety of roles including program counselor, assistant director and program director. Before joining Think Together, he served as an executive director at the San Bernardino Family YMCA, where he led branch operations, including 39 afterschool sites in the San Bernardino City Unified School District.
“We’re so happy to have these educators leading our program and field and operations teams to take Think Together to the next level of evolution for our organization,” Natalia Flores, deputy chief of programs and operations, said. “We’re hiring for new roles across the board and I’m confident their vast experience in expanded learning will sustain our best-in-class programs throughout our organization.”
Think Together currently partners with school districts and charter management organizations to provide more than 900 academic and enrichment programs outside of the school day. After two years of pandemic-related school disruptions, students are experiencing a great need for rich afterschool and expanded learning programs like the ones Think Together operates at more than 450 school sites across California.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Education reported a dramatic decline in scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress underscoring the need for academic support for youth. Two decades of growth in reading and math were sent into a downward spiral, with declines much steeper for students already at lower performance levels, widening learning disparities between the country’s high- and low-achievers.
Think Together aims to reverse this trend and recently acquired Orenda Education, a top school improvement consultancy firm, to provide both direct-to-student support as well as data-driven professional development services for school district leaders and educators.
With this sustained growth, Think Together continues to recruit purpose-driven talent and has since scaled its workforce to more than 4,000 full- and part-time staff members serving in school site and administrative roles.
Learn more about Think Together at http://thinktogether.org.
For over 25 years Think Together has partnered with schools and communities to pursue educational equity and excellence for all children. As a nonprofit organization, Think Together innovates, implements and scales academic solutions that change the odds for hundreds of thousands of California students. Think Together’s program areas include early learning, afterschool, school support services and leadership development for teachers and school administrators. For more information, call 888-485-8446 or visit http://www.thinktogether.org.
Submitted by Think Together.
