Teach For America & CCL Announce Statewide Partnership

Teach For America (TFA) North Carolina and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® have announced a new statewide partnership providing exclusive access and leadership development programming for over 2,200 diverse Teach For America alumni throughout North Carolina. The recipients of the leadership development include K-12 teachers, school and district leaders, nonprofit leaders, and other educational leaders.

Teach For America has a goal of doubling its impact in the communities it serves across North Carolina by 2030. The strategy to accomplish this goal includes not only attracting and placing corps members in classrooms across the state, but also catalyzing over 2,200 alumni impacting the state’s educational ecosystem. The partnership with CCL will provide access to transformational leadership development programming to promote the growth and retention of critical leaders in North Carolina’s K-12 educational space.

TFA North Carolina’s alumni network team will lead the engagement of alumni to access this partnership and benefits beginning as early as January 2022.

“During this unique and challenging time in K-12 education, we know this relationship will allow us to support the retention and further development of the dynamic, outcomes-driven, proximate, and equity-minded TFA alumni leaders that are impacting over 150,000 kids daily in rural and urban communities across the state. As we march towards our 2030 goal, building partnerships at a statewide level allows us to accelerate that progress in direct support of our alums through their career lifecycles,” said Dr. Monique Perry-Graves, TFA North Carolina’s Executive Director.

“We are excited to enter this partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership to provide access and leadership development to our alumni across the state taking full advantage of the access to CCL’s campus headquarters in Greensboro, NC,” she added.

The partnership includes:

• Discounted access for TFA alumni in North Carolina to world-class leadership tools and programs from CCL, including both virtual and face-to-face development opportunities.
• Cohort-based leadership programs tailored to the unique needs of TFA focused on alumni teachers, nonprofit leaders, and school and district leaders. 
• TFA-sponsored cohorts of alumni for leadership development opportunities powered by CCL, including resilience-building skills training beginning in January 2022. 
• The opportunity for TFA alumni to become certified to deliver powerful CCL content at their schools and organizations.

“In-depth studies in the field of K-12 education confirm that investments in high-quality, research-based leadership development for principals, teachers, staff, and students play an essential role in creating the transformational change needed in education today. That’s because leadership development focuses on the single most important part of any school system, public or private — its people.”

“CCL is thrilled to partner with Teach For America to provide greater access to leadership development for their diverse network of alumni across North Carolina — people who are working across the educational ecosystem to improve education outcomes for all students in our home state,” commented Lynn Fick-Cooper, Vice President of Societal Impact at CCL.