From attending a great public school in Lexington, MA and continuing on to attend Duke University, Jen Kozin has valued her education and worked to share her positive experiences with others. During undergrad, Jen spent a summer teaching English in Peru, tutored local students, and even taught photography. When a recruiter from Teach For America came to Duke, Jen realized that her teaching experiences were ones that she loved greatly, and she made the decision to become more deeply involved with education.
After spending a year in the classroom in Memphis, Jen realized that teaching was not a good fit for her. She wanted to stay in the education sector but was having a difficult time figuring out where she could fit in outside the classroom.
When she learned about Education Pioneers Fellowship, Jen was excited about the opportunity to leverage her existing skills while still contributing to the education sector in a meaningful way.
- Academics
- Data & Analysis
- Marketing & Communications
- Technology & Systems
As a Fellow, Jen served Boston Public Schools as part of a lean and innovative team, also staffed with other EP Alumni, that was responsible for using the district’s evaluation data to inform better outcomes for teacher effectiveness and student success. Although the high-stakes work of helping a major public school district leverage evaluation data was daunting, Jen was excited to help lay the groundwork for the Boston district’s data use on behalf of its 56,000 students. Her experience teaching in a public city school and her background in policy analysis enabled her to interpret data and drive key action-oriented solutions to maximize student achievement.
Following her Fellowship, Jen stayed on with Boston Public Schools full-time, where she had the opportunity to help overhaul the district’s human capital system, beginning with teacher hiring. Jen grew into a leadership role in the district, and found that the Fellowship had given her the leadership skills she needed to succeed.
