CSL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Dr. Joyce Fouts
Vice President and Vice Chair for the Board of Directors
Dr. Joyce Fouts
Vice President and Vice Chair for the Board of Directors
For more than two decades, Dr. Joyce Fouts’ educational leadership work has focused on ensuring high levels of deep learning for all students. She is passionate about promoting collective leadership efficacy, fostering a growth mindset and critical thinking driven by questions that contribute to leaders becoming proactive change agents in their organizations.
As Executive Director of the Galileo Leadership Consortium serving 33 school districts and two community colleges in Michigan’s Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, she collaboratively designed, facilitated and evaluated the Leadership Academy’s program. Launched in 1997 with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Academy is now sustained by the member organizations. More than 1200 educators completed the successful two-year program that focused on developing communities of learners and servant leaders. The participants examined exemplary practices including project-based learning, action research, design thinking with an emphasis on system thinking, empathy, equity, diversity, and restorative justice
Fouts worked for 25 years as an educational consultant at the Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency where she coached, provided consultation and professional learning sessions to school leadership teams including principals and central office personnel in the areas of leadership, school improvement, curriculum, instruction and assessment.
Her leadership beliefs were formed from the study and training of the Seven Habits of Highly Effect People. She was trained as a 7 Habits facilitator by the author of the program, Dr. Stephen Covey. For the past 30 years Fouts has had the joy of facilitating the 7 Habits trainings for over 1500 educators who reported that the knowledge, skills, and experiences gained from the program transformed both their professional and personal lives. The participants indicated that the program empowered them to be more proactive, listen to understand and to live out of their imaginations not their memories.
Fouts began her career in education as a passionate, student-centered history, civics, and psychology high school teacher. In recent years she has been an adjunct professor at Oakland University and Madonna University. A voracious reader, she believes that “to lead one must read.“
Fouts received her Ed.D. and Master of Education in Curriculum Leadership at Wayne State University. She did her undergraduate studies at Western Michigan University.
Dr. E. Sharon Banks
Treasurer of the Board of Directors
Dr. E. Sharon Banks
Treasurer of the Board of Directors
Dr. E. Sharon Banks is an industry leader. She has served with distinction as an educator, counselor, Title One parent coordinator, and district area superintendent. She also honed her administrative and consensus-building skills as the Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
She currently serves as CEO of E.S. Banks & Associates, a consulting practice focused on eradicating educational hurdles and cultivating continuous improvement.
Banks has received national, state and local-level recognition throughout her career. These awards have ranged from Michigan Superintendent of the Year (2002) to national recognition as Educator of the Year by the National Alliance of Black School Educators. She was named the National Principal of the Year while serving as the principal of Northrop High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her contributions as a superintendent led to being selected as one of seventeen superintendents nationally who participated in a National Superintendent’s Forum on Literacy at Harvard University.
She also garnered a National Lifetime ACHIEVEment Award from the United Negro Business & Professional Women’s Organization for her commitment to promoting and protecting the interests of African-American women business owners and professionals.
Banks has worn many hats during her thirty-seven-year career in academic instruction, educational consultation, non-profit work and community involvement, politics, counseling, and business operations. She is a lifelong learner, forward thinker, and visionary leader who walks in faith and feels blessed to be surrounded by her family, friends and church members. Throughout her life Banks has always remained optimistic in overcoming challenges and obstacles and believes in, “playing the hand that you are dealt”. She has lived and worked in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Louisiana and Georgia.
Banks continues to focus on leadership development, parental leadership advancement, and community involvement. She helps educational institutions, schools, parents, and students in improving the overall experience of learning, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the academic programs, and ensuring success with educational planning.
Dr. Sharron Jenkins-Norman
Secretary of the Board of Directors
Dr. Sharron Jenkins-Norman
Secretary of the Board of Directors
Dr. Sharron Jenkins-Norman is an educational change agent, thought leader and trailblazer. She has been recognized for her use of research-based school improvement strategies that have accelerated and significantly raised student achievement for students in historically underserved communities.
Norman is the former superintendent of Michigan’s Buena Vista School District. There, she led a reform effort that in four years resulted in all schools exceeding state academic targets; raised graduation rates (from 57% to 74%); improved attendance (from 77% to 94%); reduced the drop rate (from 20% to 6%) and created countless new programs and partnerships. These partnerships provided wraparound support to ensure that all students had access to opportunities for post-secondary success.
Previously, Norman co-founded the Genesee STEM Academy (GSA) and served as an Interim Superintendent of the Shabazz Academy, providing access to rigorous educational programming in coding, science, technology, engineering and math for students in historically underserved communities.
Norman served in numerous roles that both accelerated and significantly improved student achievement earlier in her career. In the Lansing School District, Norman served as director of instructional services; school improvement; and curriculum, assessment, and professional development. Norman created tools that triangulated data; created critical feedback loops to improve teacher efficacy; and aligned curriculum, instruction and assessment. Those experiences and tools now inform the protocols and strategies that she uses nationally with high priority schools to accelerate continuous improvement.
Norman received her Ed.D. in Educational Administration from the University of Akron, and two M.S. degrees from Indiana University, one in Educational Administration and the second in Elementary Education. Norman received her B.A. in Elementary Education from Stillman College.
Norman serves on numerous advisory boards including the Michigan Department of Education Ad Hoc Assessment Committee; the Saginaw Valley State University Diversity Advisory Council; and the Michigan State University Gifted and Talented Education Board. She also has served on the boards of the Girl Scouts of America and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.
Norman has been the recipient of numerous awards including Educator of the Year, the William Root Fellowship, and the Indiana Black Torch Bearer Award. She has a vision that includes ensuring that every child in this country, without regard to race, socio-economic status or zip code, has access to a rigorous education. Norman is committed to using her skills to ensure that it manifests.
Todd Henderson
Board Member
Todd Henderson
Board Member
Todd Henderson served in multiple roles throughout his career as a teacher, counselor, guidance director, assistant principal, and principal—culminating in his work as Principal Leadership Coach and Executive Director of High Priority Schools for Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency in support of Wayne County, Michigan’s, 33 local school districts.
More recently he has provided support, technical expertise, and resources, in stress management, conflict resolution, suicide, and natural disaster relief for hundreds of situations throughout the United States. Currently he is the Detroit Metropolitan Airport Delta Airlines Mental Health Counselor/Coach for Delta employees.
Henderson provided the overall leadership for the restructuring of high school education for Southfield Public Schools. He led a 32-member design team, comprising a cross-section of representatives of the school community to develop a comprehensive, transformative action plan. The report focused on evidence-based decision making as the basis for restructuring teaching and learning in all areas of the school environment.
Henderson led staff to significantly increase their commitment and capacity to develop and implement a school-wide focus that provided a learning environment characterized by high standards reflecting intellectual quality and rigor. The overall focus of the school culture consistently moved from a focus of what was being taught to what students were learning. This effort helped create results-driven outcomes by using student products and student scores on internal and external assessments to make appropriate changes in instruction, curriculum, and assessments.
Along with a talented and committed team, Henderson facilitated the design and implementation of 11th and 12th grade Small Schools Career Academies – Arts & Communications and Medical & Natural Sciences. Together with a highly skilled and knowledgeable team, he created and implemented Small Schools Learning Communities and teams to personalize the environment for all 9th-grade students, achieving recognition from the Michigan Education Association.
Henderson has received a variety of awards throughout his career, including the Wayne State University College of Education Alumni Association Educational Leadership Award; Outstanding Administrator for the state of Michigan, Michigan Music Educators Association; Outstanding Administrator, Southfield Public Schools Partnerships for Education Council; Parent Teacher Organization Distinguished Service Awards; and Oakland County Schools Counselor of the Year.
Henderson earned a B.A. in Education from Wayne State University, a Master of Education in Guidance and Counseling from Eastern Michigan University, and an Ed.S. in Leadership from Michigan State University. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor by the state of Michigan.
Valerie Brown, MSW
Board Member
Valerie Brown, MSW
Board Member
Valerie Brown coaches leaders and provides high-impact strategies for organizational transformation, advancing the implementation of best practices for continuous improvement in companies, school districts, faith institutions, as well as numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations. She is President and CEO of Progressive Strategic Solutions, offering leadership training and innovative programming in diversity, equity, inclusion, and restorative social justice.
Previously, Brown served as the Chief Strategy Officer of BTNE Enterprises, a global consulting firm. Brown’s work was critical in developing continuous improvement strategies which led to facilitating growth in some of the nation’s most rapidly improving schools and organizations. Brown’s work with high-priority schools has elevated the use of both restorative practices used in organizations to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as the use of data to eradicate long-standing achievement and opportunity gaps in historically underserved communities.
Brown has served in a variety of key roles which allowed her to help empower organizational leaders to lead from a position of strength and expand their impact in leading large-scale change and transformation.
Brown holds both a B.S.W. and M.S.W. in Clinical Social Work from Wayne State University. She has received academic awards and honors from The Eileen M. Maceroni Memorial Endowment; The Annette Sniderman Freedman Endowment; The Rachel I. Coleman Endowment; and the Jacquelin E. Washington Endowment. Her research interests include leadership development; developing innovative tools for restorative social justice and investigating ways to support the social-emotional needs of leaders and staff in communities that have historically been underserved who experienced secondary trauma.
