Authors & Presenters

Casey R. Ahner has more than 22 years’ experience in education. He has served as a special education teacher, counselor, assistant principal, and principal at the intermediate and elementary levels.

Leticia Amalla has 30 years of educational experience in the West Texas area. Her areas of expertise include gifted and talented, bilingual, and special education. She experienced tremendous success as a turnaround school principal, leveraging every aspect of the professional learning communities framework as one of the vital components of school improvement.

Dr. Aspasia Angelou has 25 years of educational experience as a teacher, teacher trainer, high school principal, and director of high school design and superintendent.

Jane Ardell is a full-time Solution Tree associate with over 30 years of experience in education. She was most recently a director at Cartwright School District in Phoenix, Arizona, where she worked with teachers and administrators on instructional planning, assessment and intervention.

Toby Arritola is the principal at Mountain Vista Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado. With more than 20 years of experience as an educator, Toby specializes in and advocates for developing PLCs and a healthy school culture.

Eric Atuahene serves as principal at Littleton STEM Academy in Avondale, Arizona. He has more than 10 years of proven leadership experience, including implementing systems, raising student achievement, and improving school culture.

Brooks Baca is the managing director of human resources for Frisco ISD in Texas, where he provides dedicated support to campus and district personnel. Brooks possesses a deep passion for cultivating a culture of high expectations for all students, implementing strategies that effectively address the achievement gap, and developing processes for shared leadership, which enable collaborative teams to thrive.

Kim Bailey is former director of professional development and instructional support for the Capistrano Unified School District in California. She also served as an adjunct faculty member at Chapman University in California.

Dr. Anisa Baker-Busby was appointed principal of Shirley Hills Elementary in July 2022. She has over 20 years of educational experience serving as a teacher and administrator, and her passion is to help schools build systems of support that ensure high levels of learning for all students.

Jack Baldermann has been a passionate educational leader for over 30 years. His experience includes leading several high-poverty urban schools to significant success and supporting eight different priority or high-poverty schools to become Model PLC at Work® schools.