Draft:Aaliyah Samuel

Dr. Aaliyah A. Samuel is a first generation, bilingual leader on education and policy, and currently the CEO and President of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).. CASEL is a nonpartisan education nonprofit that has been advancing social and emotional learning since 1994. She is recognized as a visionary, strategic thinker and problem solver with business acumen and interpersonal skills.

Education

Samuel earned an undergraduate degree from Tuskegee University in Psychology. She continued her education with a Masters from University of South Florida in Teaching and a Specialist and Doctorate Degree from NOVA Southeastern on Organizational Leadership.

Dr. Samuel also serves as the first woman of color to be appointed as a Senior Fellow to the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

Career

Dr. Samuel’s professional experiences have spanned systems-level change, education policy development, family and community engagement, and program evaluation from early childhood to higher education.

She began her career as a practitioner, first as a public school teacher and assistant principal in Hillsborough County School District in 2000 until 2009, and then a school principal in Tucson Unified School District until 2010.

In 2011, Dr. Samuel became the Senior Director of Family Support and Literacy at First Things First, co-authoring a family support framework. From there, she went to the National Governors Association (NGA) as Director of Education in 2015, overseeing the development of K-12 education policies. From 2018 to 2020, she was at NWEA as Executive Vice President of Government Affairs & Partnerships, leading state and federal education agendas. In 2021, Samuel was appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Local, State and National Engagement at the U.S. Department of Education. In January 2022, she accepted the position of President and CEO at CASEL.

Across these experiences, she has worked at a local, state, national and international level, informing policy agendas and cross-system solutions to support schools, young people, and families. Her experiences have also spanned urban, rural, and tribal contexts.

Policy Development

Dr. Samuel has served as a senior representative to cabinet officials, governors, state legislators, mayors, county officials and tribal leaders and the associations that represent them. She is also experienced in engaging the public, media, and advocacy groups on federal and state policy agendas.

In those roles, she developed an extensive expertise in intergovernmental relations, particularly building effective working relationships with national, state and local government leaders and organizations. She has developed strategies and identified opportunities for federal, state and local governments to support education agendas.

More specifically, she has worked with research teams on a research strategy for advancing policy agendas and elevating the importance of the triad of research, policy, and practice. She has also assisted with cross agency outreach on critical topics such as the reopening of schools during the COVID pandemic.

Education

As a school leader and educator for 10 years, Dr. Samuel led instructional and support personnel to strive for superior performance to provide the best opportunities for student growth and development addressing the needs of the whole child. She led restructures to meet federal re-authorization requirements for schools and completed a transition to Title I. She also managed the recruitment and hiring of staff, including a restructure of instructional teams by grade level to routinely examine and disaggregate student achievement data. In her role as a school principal, the school was awarded: $100,000 Lowes grant, $50,000 HP grant, and secured annual business partnerships.

As an assistant school principal and teacher, she developed individual education plans, independent study programs and academic remediation processes. Her expertise is in Adult Education, Dual Language Learners, Emotionally Handicapped, Specific Learning Disabled populations.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)

Dr. Samuel oversees the nonprofit that coined the term “social and emotional learning”, or SEL. SEL is defined by CASEL as “the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions. SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.”

Articles and Publications

National Academy of Medicine. A Unified Foundation to Support a Highly Qualified Early Childhood Workforce (Nov. 2017)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: Put relationship building on your back-to-school to-do list (Aug. 2019)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: Why an equitable curriculum matters (Sept. 2019)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: 8 ways teachers can make a curriculum equitable (Oct. 2019)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: 4 ways administrators can create an equitable curriculum (Oct. 2019)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: A New Strategic Vision for NWEA Policy and Advocacy (May 2019)

Aaliyah Samuel, Underlying Conditions: How the COVID-19 crisis has put the inequities of American education in plain sight (Apr 2020)

Aaliyah Samuel, NWEA: 10 ways policymakers can seize the moment and reimagine education (July 2020)

Parents as Teachers: Policymakers Must Prioritize Home Visiting to Help Our Most Vulnerable Children (July 2020)

Joe Gallagher, NWEA: Research, policy, and practice: Dr. Aaliyah Samuel on early childhood development, equity in schools, and listening to educators’ voices (Dec. 2020)

NWEA: Testing America’s Freedom (Sept. 2020)

Erin Ryan, NWEA: There’s an educator in the White House. What does this mean for policy? (Jan. 2021)

Ariana Prothero, Education Week: What Good Social-Emotional Learning Should Look Like: First, Listen to the Community (Dec. 2021)

Linda Jacobsen, The 74 Interview: CASEL’s ‘Consensus Builder’ CEO Aaliyah Samuel on Getting the U.S. ‘Back to the Middle’ on Social-Emotional Learning — and Whether the Name Needs to Change (Jan. 2022)

Aaliyah Samuel, Chicago Sun-Times. Preparing young people for the workplace requires social and emotional learning (Mar. 2022)