Consulting Team
The Consulting Team designs and delivers PEG’s consulting and training services for school districts and other clients.
Marlecia Autrey Director of Learning and Teaching
“To Change your language, you must change your life.”
-Derek Walcott (line from Codicil)
Education
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, M.A., Curriculum and Instruction
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, B.A., English Literature
What calls me to this work?
"The Rose that grew from Concrete”
Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996)
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong it learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams, it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else ever cared.
What calls me to this work are the voices that have been silenced, the voices that were never heard, the voices that were misunderstood...the VOICES of Brilliance... I must be apart of creating a world where brilliance and "Nature's Laws" are not normed in "Whiteness" and where actions and words are in balance, first and foremost My own actions and words are in balance.
Courtlandt Butts Director of Family & Community Empowerment
“… You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it.”
-Albert Einstein
Education
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, B.S. Elementary Education
University of Northern Iowa, M.A. Educational Technology and Media
What calls me to this work?
As I sat at my desk in the Education Department of Spelman College, a “voice” spoke to me and said, “your work here is finished.” I was comfortable, well established and really did not want to leave, but I felt that I was being called for something greater, something more urgent. As if by providence the work has lead me on a profound journey of personal growth and self-examination that I now feel is my responsibility to share with our educators and community, ultimately to reach full potential of our own humanity.
Terrlyn L. Curry Avery Consultant*
"Speak the truth, without fear and without exaggeration, and see everyone whose work is relative to your purpose. You are in God's work, so you need not fear men's scorn. If they listen to your requests, and grant them, you will be satisfied. If they reject them, then you must make their rejection your strength."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Education
Howard University, B.S. Psychology
Hofstra University, Ph.D. Clinical/School Psychology
Yale University, MDiv.
What calls me to this work?
My deepest desire is to promote healing - psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially. I have spent a great deal of my career providing individual help but recognize that healing often involves numerous individuals and multiple dimensions. Conducting workshops designed to help others begin to have courageous conversations about race encourages a process of healing for individuals who have been deeply wounded by the impact of race and those who inadvertently perpetuate a system of racism. It is my hope that working with these individuals and with the institutions they represent that systemic healing will take place, which, ultimately, will lead to better education and an overall well being for all children.
Diana Levy CEBAS Consultant*
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
–Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Education
California State University, Hayward, B.S. Early Childhood Education
California State University, Hayward, Standard Elementary Teaching Credential (Life)
California State University, Hayward, Professional Clear Administrative Services Credential
California State University, Hayward; pursued M.S. Educational Psychology and Educational Leadership
Nova Southeastern University, Ft. Lauderdale; pursued Ed.D in Educational Leadership
What calls me to this work?
My own personal public school experiences and later fighting for racially equitable learning opportunities for my son, combined with over forty years as an African American public school educator. My advocacy, will, and skill to improve the world of schooling for underserved students of color has been strengthened through this work. Providing racially equitable learning environments and opportunities for traditionally underserved students of color, continues as my life’s passion both professionally and personally. I feel fortunate that I can effectively continue this work through my role as PEG’s Creating Equitable Bay Area Schools (CEBAS) consultant.
David Davidson Consultant/Coach
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world."
-Paulo Freire
Education
B.A., Early Childhood and Elementary Education, Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida
M.Ed, Educational Leadership, West Georgia College, Carrollton, Georgia
What calls me to do this work?
The development of effective teachers and leaders must not be limited to ensuring excellent competence, skill, and practice in the content areas and administration alone. Policy, resources, and reform must support the development of the values, attitudes, and beliefs which form the foundation of the critical human relationships between adults and children and adults and adults (administrators, teachers, staff and families). Upon this foundation, effective teaching, learning and leadership are built. Our school leaders must not only be technically-sound competent practitioners of learning, teaching and administration, they must also be knowledgeable, fluent and skilled facilitators of and for the racial, ethnic, gender, economic and linguistic plurality of which our schools and communities are comprised. It is to this work that I am called.
Leidene King Consultant/Coach
"The longest journey is the journey inward.”
-Dag Hammarskjold
Education
Duke University, Durham, NC, B.S. in Geology with a concentration in Mathematics
St. Peter’s College, Jersey City, NJ, M.A. in Educational Leadership
Barbara Brennan School of Healing, Boca Raton, FL, Certification for BBHS Practitioner
What calls me to do this work?
My personal experiences as a biracial Black woman, and my professional experiences as an urban educator call me to do this work. Personally, I do not recall a time when I was not a racial being – when my racial identity was not salient. I learned early in life that race, or my color and other physical characteristics, meant something and seemed to be an important and defining characteristic beyond my physicality. This external “defining” more often than I would have liked, did not reflect the inherent beauty, brilliance and greatness that is at the core of who I am and that is, I believe, at the core of each of us. At times, I was “other” within my community. More often, I was “other” outside of it. From my experience of “otherness” was birthed the pursuit of an ever deepening self-love and a passion for healing-healing of my own racial wounding and that of my community. My desire for myself and those like me, is to undo our “mis-education” and embrace more fully our inherent beauty, brilliance and greatness, and to live from that place – for our own sake, and for the sake of our children.
Deshera P. Mack Consultant/Coach
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.“
-Edward Everett Hale
Education
Livingstone College, Salisbury, North Carolina, B.A.
Salisbury State University, Salisbury, Maryland, Masters Of Elementary Education
North Carolina Central University, Durham, North Carolina, Certification in Administration
What calls me to do this work?
I cannot rest knowing that there are educators working with our students every day, who believe they are giving their best, yet do not realize that an acknowledgement of cultural differences and a concerted effort towards promoting positive racial identity development must be married with the standard course of study in order to achieve maximum academic success for all students.
Deborah McKnight Special Education Consultant*
"Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
-James Baldwin
Education
University of Charleston, West Virginia, Elementary Education K-5 and Special Education K-12, BA
Buffalo State College, State University of New York, Learning Disabilities and Behavioral Disorders, MS. Ed.
California State University, Sacramento, Educational Administration and Policy Studies, Urban Administration, Credential
What calls me to do this work?
My African American father and German mother moved our large family from an all black neighborhood to an all white neighborhood in search of "better schools" when I was in elementary school. My oldest brother was soon enrolling in high school where the counselor insisted that he be enrolled in the "vocational track" rather than the college bound track. My father was busy as an owner of a computer business so it was my white mother who had to battle the counselor to ensure that he was indeed enrolled in the academic track. Had my mother not prevailed he would likely not be the gifted doctor of emergency medicine he is today. The counselor was operating under the assumption that most of the black students belonged in the vocational track. Today, the vocational track has often been replaced by the special education track. My brother, the gifted doctor, musician, playwright, and artist is my inspiration for this work.
Luis Versalles Associate Director for District Programming
"Here is the chance for young men and women of devotion to lift up the banner of humanity and march towards a civilization that is free, intelligent, healthy, and unafraid."
-W.E.B. Du Bois
Education
University of Minnesota, B.A., Spanish and Latin American Studies
University of Minnesota, M.A., Second Languages and Cultures
University of Minnesota, Certificate in PK-12 Educational Administration
What calls me to do this work?
My moral condition as a human being requires me to summon up all of my will, skill, and knowledge to intervene in my spheres of influence in order to address injustice in education. Personally my equity journey has pushed me to grow stronger each day to better myself as an anti-racist leader through the courageous conversations that are foundational to our work. Professionally, I am continually inspired by the talented leaders with whom I collaborate as we partner in deconstructing the damaging systems of systemic racism that undermine our purpose as educational leaders. It is my hope that children of all races recognize the brilliance that they embody. In the words of Du Bois, may we collectively, "lift up the banner of humanity and march towards a civilization that is free, intelligent, healthy, and unafraid."
Will Walker Consultant*
"Perhaps the whole root of the human trouble is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations...rather then confronting with passion the conundrum of life"
-James Baldwin
Education
Bethany College, B.A. Liberal Arts
Princeton Theological Seminary, M.Div
Princeton University, MA; Ph.D. Religion, Ethics and Politics
What calls me to this work?
Max Weber has defined a calling as: “the obligations put upon the individual by his position in the world.” As someone who experienced the public education system as a kind of Weberian “iron cage,” an institution which ossifies thought and creativity and blunts the creative capacities, I am compelled by the fearless educators and other caring adults who have made life-long learning a passion and joy for me to join with others in creating schools that nurture the treasures that all of our children bring into the world.
* Denotes Contract Associates
