Our Staff

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF DATA AND ANALYTICS
LaToya Bufford

LaToya serves as a Senior Data Strategist for CORE’s Data Collaborative team. LaToya is the intermediary between CORE’s analytical partners (Education Analytics) and CORE’s school system partners. Additionally, LaToya helps manage the day-to-day operations of the CORE Data Collaborative which includes recognizing partner needs and opportunities, streamlining communications, and identifying data and reporting solutions. LaToya has experience with student testing administration projects, reporting projects, and program evaluations. LaToya is familiar with state and federal accountability and testing requirements for California school districts. In addition, LaToya has worked directly with the research staff, district administrators, technical support staff, and teachers on a variety of data and research-related projects. LaToya has hands-on experience when it comes to coordinating data processing functions, assessment administrations, survey projects, and the facilitation of trainings for district administrators. LaToya received her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and has a master’s degree in business administration. LaToya currently resides in her hometown, Sacramento, with her husband and five children. Her goal is to provide support to schools and districts by helping to improve access to comprehensive, reliable, and usable research that ultimately provides a basis for improving student outcomes and student success.

Email: latoya@coredistricts.org

PROJECT SPECIALIST
Dave Calhoun

As CORE’s Executive Director of the Data Collaborative, Dave Calhoun provides data system support for the CORE Districts and Data Collaborative districts and partnering educational agencies. He also provides measurement consultation support for various CORE improvement projects, and he manages the social and emotional learning survey system that CORE developed. Dave was a high school mathematics teacher, and the Executive Director of research, evaluation, and assessment in Fresno Unified School District for 30 years prior to his direct work with CORE. As a Fresno Unified administrator, Dave served as the CORE liaison for many projects since CORE’s formation in 2010. Dave was recognized as the Fresno Public Education Fund High School Teacher of the Year in 1995. He has worked to develop and provide mathematics professional development across the country as a part of the Interactive Mathematics Project (IMP), and he has published and presented various research papers.

Email: dave.c@coredistricts.org

DATA STRATEGIST
Tanira Chau

Tanira Chau is a Data Strategist for CORE’s Data & Analytics Team. She manages the ETL (extract, transform, and load) data process for surveys in addition to being the project lead. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and minor in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. During her years at CORE, Tanira continues a passion for interpreting data through an equity lens. She applies an interdisciplinary approach to education and data, while strongly believing in data analytics as an art that requires experts from many fields. She is currently pursuing a M.S. in Analytics with a concentration in Computational Data Analytics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Email: tanira.c@cordistricts.org

CHIEF OF IMPROVEMENT, SCHOOL NETWORKS
Juli Coleman

Juli Coleman has worked in public education for 27 years, which has spanned across K-12, including regular and special education. She began her career as an elementary teacher in the Menifee Union School District. Juli moved to the Oceanside Unified School District and worked in a variety of roles and schools. She was a Resource Specialist at an elementary school, Teacher on Special Assignment at a middle school, and a Coordinator at the high school. She has worked at the San Diego County Office of Education as an Executive Leadership Coach for the past 7 years, where she has worked closely with districts through out the County helping to plan their improvement efforts. She also serves as the regional lead for Imperial, San Diego, and Orange County for the statewide regional system of support (RSDSS) that provides assistance to Title I funded schools. Juli has her master degree in special education, doctorate in educational leadership, and recently completed the Institute of Healthcare Improvement coaching program. She lives in Carlsbad with her husband and they have six kids, a dog, and one cat.

Email: juli.c@coredistricts.org

PROGRAM ASSOCIATE
Hanah Garcia-Uhl

Hanah currently serves as a Program Associate to CORE Districts. She supports anything BTSC-related and does various tasks for each school. Prior to joining CORE, Hanah was finishing up her Bachelors of Arts Degree in Public Relations at California State University, Sacramento in 2022. During her undergrad, Hanah worked as a full-time receptionist at a middle school. There she learned the importance of how to communicate effectively in a fast-paced office while balancing the needs of students, families, and staff. Hanah was also a Public Relations intern for Safetyville where she worked on a start-up monthly campaign for the organization that implemented design, intensive writing, and deliberate planning. Hanah resides in Sacramento, CA. During her free time, she loves to be outdoors, travel, or be with her family and friends.

Email: hanah@coredistricts.org

SENIOR PROGRAM MANAGER
Brandon Giles

Brandon is the Senior Program Manager for CORE’s improvement communities and CORE capability building programs. Prior to joining CORE, Brandon led the implementation of City Year’s Whole School Whole Child program at a South Central Los Angeles USD middle school. Working with educators, he supervised teams of AmeriCorps members serving as tutors, mentors, and role models for hundreds of students. Brandon also helped to develop and implement an affinity group for Latino and African American AmeriCorps members that provided professional development throughout the year as well as a staff mentor.

Brandon’s passion for education comes from his background. He grew up similar to the ways some of the students we serve at CORE do. He wants to help do his part in education equality and is excited to be doing that work with CORE.

Email: brandon@coredistricts.org

DATA STRATEGIST
JR Gold

JR serves as a Data Strategist for CORE Districts’ Data Collaborative. He works with districts in the Data Collaborative and, through data, supports CORE’s work in the Breakthrough Success Community, the College Roadmap project, custom dashboard development, and the Improvement Capacity Building Program. JR comes to CORE Districts after 9 years as a Research Analyst in the Assessment, Evaluation and Planning department at San Juan Unified School District. While at San Juan, JR learned to utilize business intelligence software and multiple data tools to create in-depth reports in support of the district’s On-Track metrics, enabling teachers and administrators to better support students through timely interventions.

JR’s passion for data and equity in education fuels his desire to assist districts in their continuous improvement efforts through better data and increased capability. He looks to grow in strategic thinking, program evaluation, and technical expertise to strengthen his abilities to support districts and their data needs.

JR holds a B.A. in History and Religious Studies from UC Davis, and an MBA from Azusa Pacific University. He resides with his wife, two children, and dog in Carmichael, CA .

Email: robert@coredistricts.org

SENIOR DATA STRATEGIST
Kirsten Joie Ignacio-Phu

Kirsten Joie serves as a Senior Data Strategist for CORE’s Data Collaborative. Kirsten Joie supports CORE’s Improvement projects and data dashboard building, in addition to being an intermediary between school districts and CORE’s analytical partners, Education Analytics.

Prior to CORE, Kirsten Joie served as a preschool teacher and a family advocate for young children and families in the Bay Area. Her passion for ensuring that children and families are improving and garnering positive outcomes from social and educational services jumpstarted her interest and career in data and program evaluation.

Kirsten Joie is a first-generation graduate with a B.A. in Psychology from UC Irvine and a Master in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. She currently resides in the Bay Area with her husband and two dogs, Max and Koa.

Email: kirstenjoie@coredistricts.org

SENIOR IMPROVEMENT COACH
Doug Kriedeman

Doug is a coach for site and district improvement teams in Southern California. Most recently, Doug served as a high school principal in Oceanside USD, where he is credited for supporting a culture of risk and reflection and building the capabilities of teachers to use data for improvement. He has more than a decade of site and district leadership experience, purposefully creating systems where teachers empower and energize students. Doug lives in Oceanside.

Email: doug@coredistricts.org

GRANTS DIRECTOR
Natalie Lenhart

Natalie Lenhart serves the CORE districts as the Grant Manager supporting the organization through researching, identifying, developing, and submitting grant proposals, aligned with CORE’s strategic vision and operational needs. Natalie’s goal as Grants Manager is to secure funding that scales the amazing work of CORE and shares CORE’s learning and impact to stakeholders in the field. Prior to joining CORE, Natalie was a program manager for the Linked Learning Alliance where she provided technical assistance and support to Linked Learning school districts across the state. Natalie focused on coalition building, employer engagement, and strategic use of data. She is passionate about working with equity-centered organizations helping to advance educational outcomes and believes that only through collaborative partnerships can we create scalable solutions.

Natalie received a BA in comparative government and economics from University of California Berkeley and a Master in Public Administration from the Price School of Public Policy at University of Southern California. She currently serves on the Board of the Capitol Network Association.

Email: natalie@coredistricts.org

SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER
Brandi Lites

Brandi Lites servers as the Project Manager for CORE Districts. In her role, she supports the program leaders who run CORE’s District Partnerships, School Networks, and Capability Building Programs. Brandi is responsible for implementing platforms designed to support and assist all team members as well as ensure successful program launches.

Prior to joining CORE, Brandi worked as a Legislative and Strategic Projects Manager for a tech start-up company that manufactures the world’s first digital license plate. She managed lobbying teams across the country as well as an overseas design team. Brandi graduated from Sonoma State University with a B.A. in International Studies and a minor in Political Science with a focus in Iberian Peninsula studies.

Brandi comes from a family of educators and understands the importance of providing young scholars with every opportunity to achieve their highest potential. Her passion to work with marginalized communities aligns with CORE’s mission to bridge education equity gaps and assist students to reach their goals. Brandi currently resides in her hometown, Sacramento, with her cat, Hoagie.

Email: brandi@coredistricts.org

SENIOR IMPROVEMENT COACH
Iris Lopez

Iris is a Senior Improvement Coach supporting innovation and co-developing best practices alongside the 9th Grade Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC) in LA and Long Beach schools. In her role, Iris focuses on collaborating with school teams to identify, execute, and sustain equity-based strategies for 9th grade on-track success. Prior to joining CORE, Iris worked at Summit Public Schools as a founding teacher for the network’s second East Bay Area school that opened in 2016. In her five years at Summit, in addition to teaching 9th grade English, Iris led site staff in adopting quality improvement methodologies to structure adult learning and improvement teams and to address school-specific and org-level equity challenges, such as disproportionate suspension rates and learning gaps between emergent bilinguals and their peers. As a former 9th grade teacher, mentor, and grade level team lead, Iris aims to help schools bridge the best that research and practitioner expertise has to offer on how school systems can best support the developmental and academic transition from middle school to high school. Iris is deeply interested in learning how systems are designed to produce the results that we see in education and how educators can reconfigure them to provide more caring and supportive environments for all students to have access to success. Before working directly in schools, Iris worked at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow with leading education scholars and partners in learning how improvement science can be used to accelerate change in educational systems.

Iris earned her B.A. in Psychology from Harvard University with a focus on adolescent development and learning. Following her time at Carnegie, she obtained her Single-Subject English Credential and M.A. in Education at UC Berkeley.

Email: iris@coredistricts.org

CHIEF OF STAFF
Brigitte Marshall

At CORE, Brigitte serves as the Chief of Staff. Originally from England, in 1991 Brigitte followed Southeast Asian refugees from the Thai refugee camps, where she worked as a teacher and teacher-trainer, to California’s Central Valley. A one-year plan to gain a deeper understanding of the resettlement challenges confronted by refugee families has turned into a 29-year odyssey of work in public sector systems, including social services and education. Brigitte has worked as a teacher, Principal, Director, and Associate Superintendent, and has also taught in teacher education and administrative service credential programs in the California State University system. She has published articles as well as English as a Second Language training materials and textbooks, and worked as an editor of language development textbooks. Brigitte concluded her career in the public education system with five years of service as the Chief Talent Officer for Oakland Unified School District.

Brigitte believes passionately in the need to prioritize the development of relationally healthy public service organizations where people can excel and do their best work in service of the public good. Relationally healthy organizations create intentional structures of authentic engagement designed to sustain high quality professional relationships. This includes practices that reduce unproductive conflict, and restorative practices when conflict has occurred.

With almost thirty years of experience in supporting the development and growth of public service professionals, Brigitte is uniquely positioned to assist organizations that are genuinely committed to bringing out the best in their employees. Skilled in the development and delivery of a wide range of strategies designed to build and sustain relational capacity, Brigitte’s strongest areas of professional practice are facilitation, training, coaching, and constituent engagement – particularly in challenging situations of transition and conflict.

Brigitte holds joint bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford in England, and a California Administrative Services Credential. She is also certified in Community Mediation and Conflict Resolution and serves on the Community Mediation Panel for Services that Encourage Effective Dialogue and Solutions (SEEDS). Brigitte is a Certified Professional Coach through Leadership that Works, accredited by the International Coaching Federation.

Brigitte lives in El Cerrito, where she is preparing to launch her youngest of three, publicly educated children.

Email: brigitte@coredistricts.org

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF IMPROVEMENT
Amanda Meyer

Amanda Meyer serves the CORE districts as a Senior Director of Improvement, supporting educators in their efforts to solve important problems of practice. Prior to joining CORE, Amanda was an improvement science specialist at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where she apprenticed with leading thinkers in systemic educational change and quality improvement. Over four years at Carnegie, she provided improvement science coaching to a variety of organizations and networks in K-12 and higher education. She managed the development of improvement methods sessions for the annual Summit on Improvement in Education, and delivered improvement science learning experiences in conference, workshop, and online settings. Amanda is particularly interested in the intersection of improvement, design, and equity work.

Amanda began her career in the classroom, teaching English as a Second Language at Sidney Lanier High School in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a B.A. in Latin American Studies, Spanish, and Educational Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to her professional roles, she has taught English language arts courses for a college access program in San Francisco and volunteers as a mentor for first-generation college students. Amanda currently resides in the Bay Area.

Email: amanda@coredistricts.org

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Rick Miller

Rick Miller serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the CORE Districts. Prior to joining CORE, Miller was the Deputy State Superintendent for P-16 Policy and Information Branch of the California Department of Education. In this position, Miller developed policy recommendations on promising ways to improve student achievement throughout California, specifically focused on closing the state’s achievement gaps from PreK to Higher Education. Prior to his time at the California Department of Education, Miller worked at Microsoft Corporation developing communications strategies on privacy, security, and overall corporate image. Miller also served as a strategic communications advisor to the Chancellor of the California State University System (CSU). Prior to working at CSU, Miller served the U.S. Department of Education in Washington D.C. as Press Secretary to Richard W. Riley, Secretary of Education in the Clinton Administration. Miller also spent time during those years periodically detailed to the White House Office of Advance where he traveled domestically and internationally on behalf of President Clinton. Miller lives in Rocklin, California with his wife, who is an elementary school speech therapist and their two sons. He was elected to the Rocklin Unified School Board in 2018 where he currently serves as President.

Email: rick@coredistricts.org

SENIOR IMPROVEMENT COACH
Samuel Milder

Email: samuel@coredistricts.org

CHIEF OF IMPROVEMENT, DISTRICT PARTNERSHIPS
David Montes de Oca

David Montes de Oca has been working in education for 25 years, beginning as a teaching assistant, a teacher in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, and later joining Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) as a teacher.

During his time with the district, David also worked as the School Design Lead for new incubating secondary schools in the OUSD’s New School Development Group. Following the redesign of over a dozen schools over two years, David was recruited to design and direct a new Office of Charter Schools for OUSD to better oversee its 32 charter schools in Oakland. This lead to his position as the Executive Director of Quality Community School Development, establishing School Quality Standards, a School Quality Review process, and co-constructing a Balanced Scorecard. Simultaneously he worked as adjunct faculty at Cal State East Bay’s Educational Leader department and as a member of the Lead Team for the State University of New York’s School Quality Review process.

Upon his appointment to the position of OUSD’s Associate Superintendent of Quality, Accountability and Analytics, the district transitioned to using online data dashboards, district-wide Cycles of Inquiry, and renewing school transformation and turnaround processes. For the past three years, David has worked as the Senior Deputy Chief of Continuous School Improvement. In this role, David oversaw the implementation of a School Performance Framework (SPF) designed to establish a tiered system of differentiated supports to achieve equitable outcomes across all Oakland schools. His division also oversaw the Office of Charter Schools and the District’s data-driven Continuous School Improvement processes, as well as the newly envisioned Call for Quality Schools process to assist school communities in transforming the District’s persistently underperforming schools.

David lives in Oakland with his wife, an Oakland Kindergarten teacher, along with their two children who attend Oakland Public Schools.

Email: david.m@coredistricts.org

CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER
Brenda Paredes

Brenda Paredes currently serves as Chief Business Officer for CORE Districts. Prior to joining CORE, Brenda worked as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Accountant of an accounting firm that specializes in non-profit organizations. In this role, Brenda provided financial consulting services to various large-scale non-profit organizations involved in higher education, poverty alleviation, and child development. She has experience in finance, operations management, and human resources, and also has a background in education. Her love for non-profit organizations and education developed over ten years ago, when she helped manage a Title I charter school in Sacramento.

Brenda’s work at the school led her to earn a Master of Arts in Instructional Communication at California State University, Sacramento where she wrote her thesis on educational policy for English Language Learners. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication, a certification in Dropout Prevention, a bookkeeping certification, PMP certification, and SHRM-SCP certification.

Brenda is passionate about community improvement, and her goal is to continue to work towards promoting an equitable educational environment for all students. As a first-generation immigrant, she understands the pressing need for student support at all levels. Brenda is fluent in Spanish.

Email: brenda@coredistricts.org

SENIOR IMPROVEMENT COACH
Lynn Rocha-Salazar

Lynn Rocha-Salazar serves as Senior Improvement Coach. In her role, Lynn is responsible for supporting school districts in equity-based reform initiatives and continuous improvement efforts. Lynn brings 30 years of education experience to her role with CORE. Her career in education includes serving as a classroom teacher, Resource Teacher, Program Manager, Vice-Principal on Special Assignment, and Principal. As a site leader, she has been directly involved in developing an aligned instructional system based on the Common Core State Standards and championing the needs of Special Education students in the regional program at Ayer Elementary. Most recently, Lynn has mentored teachers in continuous improvement efforts, developing and fostering partnerships with key stakeholders to address issues of equity and access in support of African American and Latino students. Lynn is credited with the development of specific enabling conditions that fostered the adoption of improvement principles. Lynn has been active in the Association of California School Administrators, serving in several capacities including Board President in Region 9. Lynn’s focus is to champion the work of improvement to disrupt the inequities that have historically persisted in our systems to improve the lives of the students we serve.

Email: lynn@coredistricts.org

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CORE CAPABILITY BUILDING PROGRAMS
Michelle Steagall

As the Executive Director of CORE’s Capability Building Programs, Michelle Steagall is responsible for bridging the work to support the implementation of Common Core Standards and promoting teacher and principal effectiveness across the eight CORE partner districts. Michelle brings 23 years of school district experience to her work at CORE. She began her educational career as a multi-graded classroom teacher amidst thousands of acres of wheat fields in rural North Eastern Oregon. In 1990 she moved to California to join the Clovis Unified School District family, where she served as a teacher, an assistant principal, in intermediate and elementary schools, an elementary principal and the associate superintendent, for curriculum and instruction. Additionally, Michelle served for 6 years as the superintendent of the Clay Joint Elementary School District and the Chowchilla School District, both located in the diverse heart of California, the San Joaquin Valley. Michelle earned a Masters of Educational Administration from Fresno State, a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of La Verne in Southern California. She is a licensed curriculum auditor. As a superintendent she was selected and served on various state-wide committees with the California School Boards Association.

Email: michelle@coredistricts.org

GRANT DIRECTOR
Rina Patel

Rina G. Patel joined CORE in January 2024 as a part-time Grant Director. Her role is focused on secondary and postsecondary education initiatives.
Rina’s work over the past decade has been driven by the question of how we can birth new systems, both within and outside our old systems, as we hospice the systems that are no longer serving us and our natural world.

Her attempts at answering this question have been through designing more heart and human centered approaches to change through her roles as a founder, facilitator, and mediator. Over the past decade Rina built and ran youth focused initiatives across the United States and Global South. Most recently, she was the founder and CEO of SHE Health, a teen focused mental and reproductive health company that was acquired in August 2023 by Backpack Health, a pediatric mental health company. SHE’s social and emotional learning programs over the past five years supported teens, parents, caregivers, and educators. Prior to SHE, Rina founded Aahana, an education and health non-profit for youth across rural communities in India.

Rina holds an MA in Creative Non-Fiction Writing, Storytelling, and Anthropology from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and a BS in Business Administration with concentrations in Marketing and Legal Studies and minors in Public Health and International Area Studies from Drexel University.

When Rina isn’t working, she is studying Ayurvedic Medicine where she is pursuing her studies to become an Ayurvedic Practitioner and fulfilling her broader vision to combine spirituality and holistic, nature based healing. She also loves running, writing, and going on long walks with friends.