team

Priyanka Sharma

Director

Priyanka Sharma provides technical assistance, coaching, and professional development on college and career readiness, Integrated Education and Training (IET), financial literacy, technology integration and digital literacy. She has extensive expertise in using technology to enhance and accelerate learning experiences, online and in-person. Priyanka is a prolific user of social media and works on finding ways of integrating social media and tech tools in professional development design and delivery.

Prior to becoming the Director of the New England Literacy Resource Center, Priyanka managed a non-profit arts organization raising its profile to a national level by shepherding a fundraising campaign, engaging new partners, and leveraging supporters and allies. As part of her commitment to community involvement, she has served as the Board Chair of The City School, a youth leadership organization based in Boston. She had previously served as the Board President of Friends of Community Learning Center, an organization that raises funds and public awareness for the Community Learning Center, an adult basic education program in Cambridge, MA. Priyanka has a degree in Biology and Anthropology from the State University of New York.

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Andy Nash

Senior Advisor

Andy Nash is the former Director of the New England Literacy Resource Center (NELRC). She is now Senior Advisor for NELRC, supporting The Change Agent and other specific NELRC projects. She also works on World Education projects related to her areas of expertise, including the development and implementation of learning standards, ESOL, program improvement, and the integration of adult education with civic engagement. She uses her experience on many federal initiatives (LINCS, Teacher Effectiveness, Standards-in-Action, CAELA and ELL-U, Networks for Integrating New Americans, Accelerating Opportunity, and Equipped for the Future) to bring high-quality professional development opportunities to the New England states.

Prior to coming to World Education, Andy was a community-based ESL instructor, a lecturer in the Graduate Bilingual/ESOL Studies Department of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and worked with the MA Department of Education to provide technical assistance to workplace education partnerships throughout the state.

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Cynthia Peters

Change Agent Editor and Production Coordinator

Cynthia Peters has been the editor of The Change Agent since June 2007. Her focus at The Change Agent is to create a magazine that teaches reading, writing, math, and critical thinking in the context of social issues that are relevant to adult learners. To further support classroom learning, Cynthia has aligned the lessons and extensions in the magazine with the College and Career Readiness Standards. She presents at national and state adult education conferences on a variety of topics, including persistence, civic participation, math, digital literacy, and using socially relevant materials that are aligned with the College and Career Readiness Standards. From 2013-15, she taught the online persistence course for World Education. She currently teaches ESOL in a workplace-based program in Boston, and since 2002 has taught a wide range of adult education classes, including ABE, GED, Bridge to College, and the Adult Diploma Program.

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Ebony Vandross

Staff Associate

Ebony Vandross provides support across multiple projects including The EdTech Center and E-Learning, NCTN, The Change Agent, event and meeting planning, data management, and communications related tasks within the U.S./domestic as well as Asia/international divisions of World Education, Inc.