Created the concept for the Taylor Academy alternative school for at-risk students in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights district, which is now at Heights High. She directs the Chalkdust Education Foundation, which offers training, enrichment opportunities and other resources for parents and students in urban communities by supporting efforts such as IndeedWeCode, a programming camp founded in 2015 for African American high school girls.

Supports JumpStart’s core mission to help minority and female entrepreneurs by managing relationships with collaborators, funders and other community partners. Young Ohio companies receiving ongoing assistance from JumpStart and its partners have created 7,199 jobs, representing $458 million in labor income, according to a report commissioned by the nonprofit business accelerator and investor. The 912 companies paid $50 million in state and local taxes in 2018.

An inventor on three patents, she has another nine applications pending. She has developed several engineering courses and guided students who have gone on to Ford, Tesla, SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Harley-Davidson, GE and others. 

John Marshall School IT, a school in the Cleveland Municipal School District, is the first school in Ohio to focus on computer science and is leading the #CSforAll movement in Cleveland as a pioneer in IT workforce pipeline. It is also one of the first schools in the nation to focus learning around computational thinking skills, which give students a competitive edge in their future.

She has published more than 130 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and has served in prominent roles such as the Advisory Council to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Advisory Council for National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

She is leading an industry-driven IT workforce alliance in Northeast Ohio. RITE has championed a regional vision of a diverse, industry-responsive IT talent pool that is an economic driver to growth, competitiveness, and prosperity for Northeast Ohio.

She created ArtWorks, an out-of-school college and career-readiness program for high school students where they work apprenticeship-style roles in fields such as film, digital game design and theater. In 2014, she founded the Cleveland High School for Digital Arts, a year-round school that immerses students in project-based learning. She encourages middle school girls participate in STEAM Saturdays and Level Up CLE 2119 in the area underserved communities.

Creates STEM experiences that support a variety of STEM badges in areas including cyber security, programming, engineering and robotics. Nearly 30,000 girls in 18 Ohio counties are exposed to these important learning programs.

She is leading one of the most ambitious school reform initiatives in Ohio. “The Cleveland Plan,” which won bipartisan support in the Ohio legislature before being signed into law by Governor John Kasich, drew national attention to Cleveland for its bold and aggressive approach to systemic and legislative reform. CMSD is the second largest school district in Ohio.

One of her priorities is increasing minority and underserved student access to high quality STEM education during the traditional school day, afterschool, and in summer programs. She is the Chair of the STEM caucus on the Hill, and co-introduced the Advancing Girls in STEM Act to increase exposure and awareness of STEM fields for elementary and middle school girls

She was the recipient of the National Association of Biology Teacher’s inaugural award in 1992 for Promoting Young Women in Science. She was selected to participate in the first Cornell Institute for Biology Teachers, which has been an ongoing program since 1990. She has been instrumental in helping TIES to design the STEM programs and schools for girls in Egypt.

She was the founding director of Science Research & Engineering Program (SREP) at Hathaway Brown School. This is an elective program that matches high school students with research laboratories in the area until they graduate from the school. More than two thirds of the students participate in this program today. She is also a published research scientist 

Has extensive experience in curriculum redesign of teacher education programs and in STEM education. She is a co-principal investigator for several grants related to STEM education, teacher preparation, project-based instruction and computer science education.  She serves as the Faculty in Residence at MC2STEM High School where she assists with students, teachers, curriculum and the CSU partnership.

She directs the annual Engineering Challenges Carnival, CWRU’s largest public STEM outreach event for pre-K through eighth-grade students and annually hosts Girls Take Flight, an event in partnership with NASA and Girl Scouts of North East Ohio that targets elementary school aged girls. She leverages stakeholder resources to provide unique and innovative STEM experiences for local youth, with a particular interest in exposing underrepresented minority students to STEM. 

She is working with the NIH to persuade them to provide their banks of tumor types in Cleveland — supporting her building of a bank of breast cancer samples from patients across the country. This is important to the drug development pipeline here in Cleveland. She is working with a team to revamp STEM graduate education at CWRU School of Medicine. She helped develop the concept of the Innovation Fund, a philanthropic program providing resources to early-stage projects.

She founded Laurel Center for Research on Girls, which hosts a biennial symposium attended by 100 educators and advocates for girls from around the country and Canada who discuss the latest research on how to best educate girls and share best practices. Students from Pre-K through 12 participate in established STEM curriculum. She has served on the faculty for the NAIS Institute for Aspiring School Heads and the Heads’ Network Leadership.

She runs the elective program founded by Patty Hunt, in which freshmen are matched with research laboratories in the area where they work until high school graduation. The students are mentored by her for two to three years – leading them to publish their work and win major national awards. She conducted a 20-year longitudinal study of graduates.

She runs the Early College Early Career (ECEC) program, which is the nation’s only manufacturing pre-apprenticeship program focused on helping inner-city and rural high school students connect to long-term, rewarding careers in manufacturing. She has placed 79 students in manufacturing companies, which is critical to Northeast Ohio’s future STEM workforce.

She leads the STEAM Capstone Program at the Upper School, which provides a coach to students with opportunities to approach real-world issues with interdisciplinary, experiential and community-based strategies while building mentor and peer relationship. She co-founded STEMteachersCLE, where teachers lead sessions and network with other Cleveland area  teachers on STEM related topics.

She secured approval for the college’s applied bachelor’s in microelectronic manufacturing, the first of its kind at a community college. She also facilitated the redesign of the Patsie C. and Dolores Jenee Campana Center for Ideation and Invention, including expanding the Fab Lab, another community college first. She led the development of associate degree programs in digital fabrication, cybersecurity and digital forensics, and leads Society of Women Engineers’ LCCC chapter.

Led the expansion of early childhood STEM experiences in Northeast Ohio by providing play and hands-on experimentation environments that support the natural curiosity to observe and explore, design, problem-solve and collaborate.

She has worked with the National Academies on important issue facing the nation. She has been appointed to the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication Research and Practice, and the Committee on Learning Science in Informal Environments. She has been tapped to provide reports and testimony to the Climate Change Initiative, Chemistry in Primetime and Online, and the Committee on Science Learning K-8.

She is responsible for the care of 350 western lowland gorillas at 49 zoos in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums — from relocation to determining which females can get pregnant. She works with staff from the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International to help students conduct senior research at the University of Rwanda. She is chair of both the Gorilla Species Survival Plan and the Gorilla Saving Animals from Extinction program at Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

She created International Women and Girls in Science Day, which provides hands-on activities and opportunities to meet museum scientists and learn about STEM-based careers. It is the capstone event of “Celebrating Women in Science – Presented by KeyBank,” a series of lectures, exhibits and special programs at the Museum. Her goal is to encourage more girls and young women to study science and pursue careers in scientific fields.

She has represented the Sewer District on the Student Technical and Engineering (STEP) Program and Architecture Construction and Engineering (ACE). She is active in the National Association of Black Engineers and is especially focused on the program that encourages the pursuit of engineering for young people.

She is the project manager for the Great Lakes Hyperloop Feasibility Study, which is evaluating the viability of an ultra-high-speed Hyperloop passenger and freight transport system linking Cleveland and Chicago and ultimately a network to the East Coast. This applies new technology to existing transportation engineering processes. It is the first Public-Private Partnership out of the handful of hyperloop corridor studies in the country.

They have provided measurable grants as primary funder of  STEM organizations and initiatives. Great Lakes Science Center received significant funding to its endowment fund and for the space exhibit for several years. They partnered with the City of Cleveland on many Cleveland Municipal School District programs.

She advocates for progressing women in leadership roles as a featured speaker, published author and consultant. This is complimented by serving on boards including The National Inventors Hall of Fame, The Urban League of Greater Cleveland, Jumpstart, Inc., Entrepreneur’s EDGE, the Technology Commercialization Steering Committee of Case Western Reserve University, and the Advisory Boards of the Northeast Ohio Technology Council and the Generation Foundation.

Is the program lead on an innovation for Tactile Medical that is designed to relieve lymphedema in patients suffering from buildup due to removal or trauma to the lymph nodes. It went through an FDA clinical trial and recently launched in-market.

As an industry leader in historic preservation and restoration architecture, she has led the establishment for historical significance and place for many Ohio buildings such as Akron Soap Company and John Carroll University’s Murphy Hall. Her work, which includes documentation of properties for the National Register of Historic Places and the Library of Congress, enables restoration projects to be financed through historical preservation and rehabilitation tax credits.

She founded a national software licensing recruiting platform to the sports and events industry that is licensed to more than 1,100 sports and live event organizations. She launched the first built-in gender job description analyzing tool, a welcoming platform to over 200,000 women and 200,000 minority candidates. She led national efforts with the major leagues to encourage recruitment of women into sports management.

She was one of the founders of the ‘Women in Technology’ group at Lubrizol, which was created over 20 years ago to provide a professional forum for females in technology and science related roles at Lubrizol; this group successfully expanded as ‘Women in Lubrizol Leadership,’ supporting all Lubrizol women. Having worked overseas, she promotes STEM locally and globally. She also mentors and coaches female high school and college students pursuing STEM fields.

She is passionate about teaching people of all ages about science, creating and annually producing Weather Education Day with the Cleveland Indians. In 2018, she started a multi-year initiative “Growing Curiosity: Girls In STEM” to encourage and promote girls and women in STEM. During her literally hundreds of school visits, she encourages students to think about careers in STEM. 

She manages an early career program structured to develop next generation engineers and computer scientist by providing formalized training, guided mentorship and effectively coaching associates through execution of technical projects. Research background includes engineering analysis and work with technical groups integrating complex systems for use in the space industry.

She is a board member and former president of Northeastern Ohio Science and Engineering Fair, a non-profit, all volunteer organization whose goal is to get young adults interested in science and engineering by participating in a science and engineering competition. The fair has been held every year since 1954 and is affiliated with the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

She runs active training and volunteer programs for women in science, including a speakers’ bureau. 

She manages the public-private partnership with MC2 STEM High School and formerly served on the Friends of MC2 STEM High School Advisory Board. She is an advisory board member for Project Green Schools, which provides Students, Educators, and Administrators with environmental and STEM education programming that supports service projects and green initiatives that geared to develop future leaders through education, project-based learning and community service.