Noelle is a relationship and capacity builder with twenty-three years of experience centering equity and justice for historically marginalized children in schools. She coaches and facilitates learning to empower leaders to transform systems so that all children are guaranteed a liberatory educational experience that affirms their humanity and supports them to fulfill their unique potential. She is a highly reflective, adaptive leader, with deep expertise in leadership coaching, facilitation and professional learning design.
Her approach to creating equitable and just systems in schools begins with a clear purpose. She focuses on developing trust among leaders and teams and building their capacity to create a culture of constant learning and creativity. She focuses on using a systems thinking approach, leading with empathy, and nurturing a willingness to stretch, grow, and experiment together, all in service of a clear purpose: a just education system.
She believes love needs to be at the core of the way we work together and the systems we create.
Noelle currently serves as the 21CSLA State Center Coaching Coordinator, based at UC Berkeley. For the previous six years, she worked as a facilitator, coach, and consultant for Elena Aguilar, where she led coaching program development, capacity building and systems change work in schools and districts around the US and internationally.
And prior to that, she worked for a combined 14 years as a teacher, coach and administrator in Oakland and San Francisco.
Noelle grew up in the diverse city of Houston, Texas. She is thoroughly Texan, in her love of colorful storytelling, her friendly way, and her constant longing to sit on a porch and talk. Attending Houston’s public schools, she befriended people from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds and developed appreciation for difference among people, as well as an awareness of inequality. These experiences deeply influence her work today.
She holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin in Latin American Studies and Spanish Literature, and an MA in Education Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. She also holds a California Administrative Services Credential.
She is inspired by the creativity, humor, and resilience of her former students and rejuvenated by being quiet in nature.