Staff
Andy Beck
Andy is the Executive Director of School & Main Institute. Andy has worked for over 25 years creating community-wide strategies that impact young people, their families, and the communities in which they live. Andy has been involved in efforts that range from educational leadership and teaching to workforce, youth and community development. At SMI, Andy has facilitated collaborative work at the federal, state and local level and is known nationally for his ability to bring systems that support youth (education, workforce, human services, housing, etc) together to achieve meaningful outcomes for youth and greater effectiveness and efficiency for the systems that support them. Andy has worked as a teacher, a building principal, and an instructor at the graduate level and is a former president of the Alternative School Alliance based in Massachusetts.

Sue Brown
Sue is School & Main Institute's Financial Manager. The co-founder of a local School-to-Career partnership in Summit County, Colorado, Sue is also a member of the Colorado Tech Prep/School-to-Career Advisory Board. She brings almost 20 years of financial management and small business ownership experience to the organization.

Kathy Flynn Woodland
Kathy is a Senior Field Services Manager at School & Main Institute. She brings over 18 years of experience in the fields of education and workforce development with extensive work on local, state and national policy, legislation & practice, including a focus on public/private community partnership development. Prior to working with SMI, Kathy was the Director of Partnership Development and Field Services for the Massachusetts Office for School to Work Transition, responsible for helping mobilize and build the capacity of community partnerships by providing technical assistance in strategic planning, system benchmarking, program operations, and continuous improvement methods. Kathy’s professional experience also includes both local and statewide management of at-risk and out-of-school youth programs, administration of youth and adult local Workforce Development efforts, administration of a non-profit rehabilitation center, and as an archaeologist in the Hudson River Valley and Guatemala.

Deborah Thomas
Deborah is the Administrator and Event Planner at School & Main Institute. She brings over 14+ years of experience in the event planning industry. Deborah has worked for various non-profit and for-profit organizations in Boston and New York City. She has participated in industry meetings, and has served as a Fellowship Leader with The Partnership, Inc (2005). She has also served as diversity spokesperson to increase strategies for more employee diversity and co-created a scholarship fund for qualifying college students interested in pursuing the Hospitality and Tourism Industries. Since moving to Boston, she has mentored and participated as a judge for senior students at The Boston Arts Academy.

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Betsy Draper
Betsy has worked in the fields of youth programming, community partnership development and management training for 20 years. For the past 14 years, she's been with School and Main Institute as the professional development manager, as a consultant, and as an Initiative Coordinator of the Texas WIA Youth Program Initiative. Betsy specializes in group process and facilitation, collaborative practices and systems building, rural community development, management of youth initiatives, and effective practices for young people including subjects such as mentoring, work-based learning, entrepreneurial practices, community service, student leadership, and skill based learning. Betsy's previous experience includes operating a runaway shelter, serving as a Florida Senate legislative aide, counseling youth and their families, and directing community youth initiatives.

Jean Hammes
Over the last few years, Jean has worked and collaborated on education and workforce development initiatives in several states and localities. Jean provides training and technical assistance to designing and supporting educational reform, partnership skills building, and strengthening workforce development linkages to support youth investment and community youth development systems. Jean also serves as a coach/facilitator for training institutes, retreats, and skill building workshops. Previously, Jean worked as Project Director for the Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) in Emeryville, California, where she managed the workflow across multiple large-scale projects located in four states, and worked with the team in conducting research to support projects and remain on the forefront of policy and practice. Prior to joining the IPAR team, Jean worked for the Summit County (Colorado) Chamber of Commerce. She has an extensive experience working with education reform, workforce development, and community development initiatives. She served as a founding partner for Summit County’s, Colorado, School-to-Career partnership and its community resource and involvement organization. Jean also served as a local coordinator for the National Employer Leadership Council’s (NELC) Colorado Project, led Summit County, Colorado, in a national partnership with the Utility Business Education Coalition, and co-authored the partnership’s application and documents to become a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. She served as a founding board member for the Rural Resort Region’s Workforce Investment Board assisting with the outline and development of its Workforce Investment Act implementation proposal and service delivery plan. She continues to remain involved with the local workforce efforts in identifying and bringing together partners to combine their energies and resources to achieve common goals. Jean has also served on local community advisory committees and on regional and statewide boards dealing with planning, policy, and implementation of School-to-Work, Tech Prep, Workforce Investment Act, and community coalition initiatives. Prior to moving to Colorado, she taught Business Education in her home state of Iowa. Jean’s educational background includes Bachelor of Arts in Education and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa.

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Robin Nadeau
Robin Nadeau is the Program Director at Year Up Boston, an intensive training program that prepares urban youth for professional careers and higher education.She brings a combination of experience from youth/adult education, community-based non-profit organizations, and the business sector to her work. Prior to joining Year Up, Robin was a Senior Field Services Manager at School & Main Institute (SMI). She also worked in the areas of employment, training and education at the International Institute of Boston, a refugee resettlement agency, and under the Rhode Island School-to-Career initiative as the State's Training Coordinator/Assistant Director. There she provided technical assistance to regional partnerships while developing statewide capacity building linkages, managing program operations, and coordinating training sessions for educators and business professionals focusing on issues of partnership development. Robin was also the founding Coordinator for one of the state's Regional School-to-Career Partnerships. Additionally, Robin's experience includes developing and managing at-risk youth programming at the local and state levels, marketing for the long-term health care industry, and as a worksite English as a Second Language (ESL) instructor for the Hilton Corporation.

Lori Norris
Lori brings over 15 years of experience in the areas of workforce development, PK-16 education, alternative education, adult education and educational / vocational services for special needs populations. Prior to joining School & Main Institute, Lori served as the Chief of Statewide Youth Services at the RI Department of Labor and Training (DLT).  A highlight of Lori’s accomplishments at DLT was the creation and implementation of a statewide youth workforce development system, which called for systemic change across state agencies as well as community service providers. Lori worked with stakeholders to map assets and resources, eliminate duplication of effort and increase efficient and effective services for youth. As a result, the youth system went from serving 400 youth in 2006 to 10,000 by 2009.  While at the DLT, Lori served as the lead for the RI Shared Youth Vision Initiative. This federal pilot project charged RI with mobilizing its vision to provide efficient and effective services for RI’s neediest youth so that they could attain successful educational, life skills and workforce development outcomes. Prior to her DLT position, Lori was CEO for Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island, an agency specializing in vocational rehabilitation for individuals with disabilities and other barriers to employment. The agency also provided transitional services for youth in five districts and operated an alternative high school for youth with special needs.  As part of her work with School and Main, Inc., Lori supports four school districts in Massachusetts as they create and implement online learning opportunities for youth at risk of dropping out. 

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Nora Priest
Nora has over 20 years of experience in education, youth program design, public/private sector partnership development, publishing, and instructional technology design. An SMI staff member and associate since 1994, she has provided training and technical assistance to numerous state and community level education and workforce partnerships. She also spent five years immersed in the educational technology market as Vice President for Educational Services at KidsEnergy, an innovative e-learning company she helped found. There she served as lead architect and project director for large scale e-learning applications, including ProjectPower, a project-based learning application, and a suite of tools for The Big Picture Company’s national network of alternative high schools. Nora also owns and runs MindMoxie, a creative educational design company which does web application and curriculum product development for K-16 publishers and other educational organizations. Previous career adventures include work with the national office of Reading is Fundamental and the Fulbright Teacher Exchange program in Washington, DC, and two years in Haiti, where she helped found and direct a children’s home, school, and clinic. Nora holds a Master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor’s from Georgetown University.

Elizabeth Vasquez
Ms. Vasquez has been a management consultant for over 20 years, providing organizational development services to federal, state, and corporate clients. For her clients, Ms. Vasquez has conducted needs analyses, facilitated strategic planning processes, assisted with organizational development and problem solving, designed and delivered training and other programs, and conducted program evaluations. In recent years, Ms. Vasquez' work has concentrated on international projects as well as on high performance workplace initiatives here in the US. Ms. Vasquez has 20-years of experience in workforce development issues, and has been consulting with the National School to Work Office since 1996. She has helped design national and state institutes, has trained facilitators to support institute teams, and has facilitated institute teams herself. Additionally, she has helped state STW initiatives--including Illinois, Michigan, Vermont, lorida and Mississippi with strategic planning and other leadership and system development efforts. In addition to her consulting work, Ms. Vasquez has published handbooks and monographs in the workforce development arena, including: Education and Training: Manufacturers' Competitive Advantage, How To Facilitate Groups and How To Train, handbooks for facilitators and trainers respectively (1996) and The Smart Workplace: Developing High Performance Work Systems, a video series workbook published by the National Association of Manufacturers (1994).

Ephraim Weisstein
A longtime associate and SMI collaborator, Ephraim has extensive experience helping school districts and communities in New England and across the nation make strategic investments based on analyzing student data and current and missing resources. While Vice President at the Commonwealth Corporation, Ephraim helped lead and design the Massachusetts’ Pathways to Success by 21 (P-21) initiative where he worked closely with state and local district leaders to implement resource mapping as a key method to identify gaps and duplications in available resources and the implications for strategic planning and policy development. He currently is working with the New York City Department of Education on a similar process for NYC’s large disconnected youth population. As an SMI associate, Ephraim has worked closely with both New York State officials in the Depts. of Education and Labor, as well as key leadership from several Alabama rural communities on the development and implementation of a shared vision for youth with the purpose of deepening collaborations—whether at the state or local level—and helping partners gain a better understanding of available youth services and resources and how to strategically maximize their use and foster new opportunities.

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