DEI Lightning Talk

Cheyenne E. Batista is Founder & CEO of Firefly Worldwide Inc., a global education consulting practice supporting school and non-profit leaders with leadership, management, and equity-centered practices. She previously served as a founding principal and superintendent of K-12 schools in New York City after teaching in K-8 classrooms there and in São Paulo, Brazil and leading programs within the nonprofit and corporate sectors. Cheyenne is pursuing an Ed.D in Education Policy & Leadership at American University, has a B.A. in Communication Studies from UNC Chapel Hill, and an Ed.M in Education Policy and Management from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

JoyAnn is a middle school librarian, a co-founder of EduPride Alliance, a member of the ISTE Librarian PLN, and the recipient of the Outstanding New School Librarian in 2019 from the Indiana Library Federation.

Jorge Valenzuela is an education coach, author, and advocate. He has years of experience as a classroom and online teacher, a curriculum specialist, and a consultant. His work focuses on improving teacher preparation in project-based learning, computational thinking and computer science integration, STEM education, and equity and SEL integration. Jorge is an adjunct professor at Old Dominion University and the lead coach at Lifelong Learning Defined. His book Rev Up Robotics: Real-World Computational Thinking in the K–8 Classroom is available from ISTE.