Innovation Services

Systemic Evolution with a Professional Diversity Approach

Innovation Services is a division of the Learning Counsel dedicated to helping schools advance systematically and manage change through a range of partnerships and resources, including live events, consulting, and unique multi-year engagements.

The team, consisting of practitioners at all levels of the educational system and private sector can personalize partnerships to meet the individual needs of systems and educators as they work toward personalized learning and technology architecture models. This professional diversity gives our partners a distinct advantage and makes us uniquely positioned to help school systems succeed in a changing global and local context.

Formed around four pillars of practice: Vision, Research, Learning, and Innovation, our work addresses current and future issues and strategies being experienced across the country, and leverages research and publications by The Learning Counsel and its partners to help schools and districts evolve forward.

The Team

Professional diversity is powerful. The Innovation Services team is made up of seasoned executive-level educators and non-educators covering the range of systemic needs, all with the intense focus on improving outcomes for learners. From policy and governance to hardware and securityinfrastructure, and everything in between, our team of professionals is prepared to support the work of your team. Our close collaboration with the Learning Counsel’s research and editorial team, along with over ten years of teamwork with education’s top leaders in teaching and learning and educational technology, has helped us to assemble a diverse group of experienced professionals. In essence, we’ve done all the jobs within educational systems, community organizations, and businesses, so we really do know the work.

LeiLani Cauthen, CEO & Publisher, Learning Counsel News Media & Research

As CEO and Publisher at Learning Counsel News Media & Research, LeiLani is a skilled senior executive and strategist, and is best known as a futurist and author of The Consumerization of Learning, as well as many Special Reports, articles and podcasts with some three million followers. At Learning Counsel, she leads large quantitative and qualitative national school leadership surveys and speaks in over thirty cities a year. LeiLani has over thirty-five years of experience in news media, research, software development and AI, legislative work, school administration, and has been helping define this century’s real change to teaching and learning alongside technical innovation.

As the CEO of Learning Counsel with 310,000 educator subscribers, LeiLani maintains relationships with Administrators, IT executives and curriculum/ instructional staff in the education field and consults with high tech firms and other media organizations.

LeiLani spent four years of her career immersed in the encryption software field, working with State agencies, utility companies, education institutions and others in the public sector – becoming an expert at some of the most sophisticated software infrastructure and integrations.

LeiLani led the work to create a new spatial-temporal AI for calendaring classes in schools that would allow them to do pace-based learning with algorithms that manage the auto-cohorting of smaller groups or individuals so live teaching is still part of lessons.

Matt Yeager, Technology Strategist & Connectivity Champion

Founder & CEO | MJYC.tech

A visionary leader with over 20 years of executive technology experience in the education sector, Matt is committed to promoting digital equity and implementing innovative technical solutions for schools, governments, and communities. In his roles as Chief Technology Offi cer and Assistant Superintendent, he spearheaded signifi cant initiatives, such as 1:1 device programs, virtual learning platforms, and statewide broadband expansion, successfully securing more than $100 million in funding.

Appointed by the Governor of Texas to the Governor’s Broadband Development Council, Matt influences broadband policy to improve digital access. He earned a B.S. in Technology Management from Texas A&M University and an MBA from East Texas A&M University.

Dr. Khechara Bradford, Founder & Chief Learning Officer, Level Up Edu

Dr. Khechara Bradford is the founder and Chief Learning Officer of Level Up Edu, an educational consulting firm in Houston, TX, dedicated to transforming educational practices. Prior to launching Level Up Edu, Dr. Bradford held several key leadership roles, including Executive Officer of Specialized Learning & Services for the Houston Independent School District, Deputy Superintendent for the Providence Public School District, Chief of Curriculum & Instruction for Spring ISD, and Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction for Fort Worth ISD.

Dr. Bradford earned her doctorate in Educational Leadership and Policy, with a focus on Special Education, from the University of Houston in 2022. Her extensive background and commitment to educational excellence continue to drive her work in supporting innovative learning models.

Chris McMurray, CAO Learning Counsel News Media & Research

Currently serving as Chief Academic Officer, Chris is engaged with school leaders across the country working toward transforming teaching and learning experiences through a culture of entrepreneurialism and personalization, leveraging technology. His work with the Learning Counsel is to strengthen the services available to schools through oversight of the Learning Leadership Society, in addition to leading the Innovation Services division of the Learning Counsel.

Chris has a passion for creativity, and has been in educational, community development and business leadership roles ranging from teaching to strategic business development and systems implementation. Previously an assistant superintendent, principal, staff developer and classroom teacher, he combines his passion for teaching and learning with marketing and strategic development, to foster innovation in the education sector. Prior to entering education, Chris enjoyed a career in advertising as a creative director, then shifted to the information technology field to lead marketing and initiatives in new product development and strategic business alliances.

• Policy – legislation; advocacy; governance
• Leadership - strategic planning; implementation; communications; organizational transformation and alignment
• Teaching and Learning – professional learning and development; instructional coaching; digital curricular resource identification, review, adoption, and implementation; structures for personalized learning; leveraging physical space design
• Technology – technology infrastructure assessment, modeling and strategy; hardware and software procurement and implementation; network safety and security
• Digital User Experience – expertise within discrete digital resources and across enterprise systems all together to model best practice architectures
  

Our Work Is Your Work

Throughout each year, most of our work is centered around projects for Learning Leadership Society members, such as the annual terminology dictionary and resource guide revisions, new experiential learning standards, instructional design models, analyzing research results, writing special reports, and coordinating live leadership learning events. Because our team’s diversity ranges from strategic planning in the boardroom to planning learning experiences for students, projects are personalized to fit the individual needs of each system regardless of size or scope. Centering work around research-based effective practice and implementation science, our partnerships are strategically crafted to help catalyze change, while being mindful of existing conditions and successes being experienced in each system we work with.

School and District Advisory Services

School Workflow Efficiency Advisory Service to help schools or individual departments identify critical areas of individual and collaborative workflow, systems and procedures, that can be improved to increase service level and operating efficiency through an objective assessment of workflow against our knowledge of best-in-class management, policies and technologies. Your objective may be managing a shortage of staff or teachers, gaining more learning instruction time, saving on inter-departmental scheduling interactions, and other gaps we know schools have today.

School Strategic Planning Advisory Service to help education institutions plan cohesive strategy from whatever point they are at and overcome unpredictability and inefficiency by understanding differences between mere tactics and a full strategy. Know the difference between a Goal, Plan, Program, Project, Directive and how to align them all. Now is the time to go professional grade with your strategic planning and execution.

School Flex Learning Logistics Schooling Advisory Service is to help education leaders see what a new schooling schema would look like in their own system or part of their programs. Flex Learning Logistics is a pace-based digital resource workflow schema with live teaching intersection. It proposes that schools create digital workflow efficiency to unburden teachers and respond to attrition, absenteeism, staffing shortages and a host of other problems with a reworking of all tech and practice into a holistic architecture. The vision proposes schools also use spatial-temporal AI to trigger live teaching as cohorts accrue to points of need in courses, replacing whole-group-class structure and period/block schedules with personalized pathways in a rearrangement of time, space, technologies, and staffing. Both students and teachers may be on campus or anywhere. It is not all-online or even all-digital, but any mix of live or virtual resources and human teaching and group interaction with superior workflow and dynamic time management. This advisory service starts with paid exploratory calls and assignments for school or district leaders that inquire into details of existing practices. Thereafter, further advisory services give step-by-step guidance and timelines on piloting and proving workability, and then extension to more schooling operations.

GET STARTED

Contact us for a free one-hour exploratory consult.