Director, San Francisco, California
Nicole McZeal Walters, Ed. D. is a Director for the National Urban Alliance in its partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District. Her years as a public educator began in 1997 where she worked in the Aldine Independent School district located in Houston, Texas as a teacher, skills specialist and later, school administrator. Prior to working with the National Urban Alliance, Dr. Walters served as the Managing Partner of the Early Initiative Group, LLC, a boutique educational consulting group specializing in school improvement planning, program design, evaluation, and professional development.
As a researcher and consultant, Dr. Walters’ varied research interests include quality practices in Pre-Kindergarten school readiness, literature, culture, language and cognition in urban school education, college/career workforce readiness, and; teacher staff development. She is also a lecturer and professional coach with Texas Teachers Alternative Education program where she trains and mentors first and second year teachers.
Dr. Walters is passionate about early childhood education, equitable school conditions for all students, and career and education workforce readiness. After seeing the lack of curricular focus in workforce curriculum to prepare students to transition successfully to college and life beyond, she developed standards for a workforce shadowing program. This award-winning instructional professional development program co-created with the Houston A+ Challenge (formerly the Houston Annenburg Institute), titled, The Teacher Externship Program was presented and published during the 2009 National Teacher Externship Conference with the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, MO.
Dr. Walters has a Doctoral degree and Masters Degree in Education Administration from Texas Southern University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in English from the University of Houston. In addition to her degrees, she holds professional certifications in Generic Special Education (EC-12), Elementary Self-Contained (1-8), English and Language Arts (1-8), Generalist (EC-4), and Principal. She currently serves on the Board of the Education Foundation of Harris County where she is the Education Strategy Chair, and holds memberships in the National Association for the Education of Young Children, The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and is an Ad hoc Reviewer for the National Charter Schools Institute.
Nicole M. Walters, Ed. D.
nmwalters@hotmail.com
