Isamar Vega Alvarado
NorCal / Central Valley, She/Her/Ella
About
Former diversity & international higher education admissions professional turned LatAm ed policy student turned 20-something who takes a semi-sabbatical to travel & wayfind herself to a new path while working part-time remotely (before it was required) and ends up deciding to go to business school in the UK to explore the possibility of profit + purpose + large-scale systems change through social enterprise / edtech / human-centered design.
I am a proud dual U.S. + México citizen (MX is the new one!), a polyglot-in-progress (speak to me in 🇲🇽🇧🇷while I re-learn 🇫🇷+ 🇮🇹), wannabe portrait & travel photographer, a lapsed avid reader, and like every other millennial <<I like to travel>> (6 of 7 World Wonders down!).
My lenses are colored by being a first-gen college grad, daughter of immigrants including a mostly single mom, from a small, poor rural-ish town in the agricultural center of California who grew up on foodstamps, libraries, tacos, novelas, too many planners and dreams of great things to come.
Contact
Work Experience
2016 - 2018 Assistant Director, Diversity Outreach
2014 - 2016 Admission Counselor, International Outreach
Regions: U.S. (CA Central Valley & other rotating regions), Mexico, Central & South America, UK, Ireland, Canada
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
Education
Degree candidate in 1-year program beginning Sept 2021
International Education Policy
Completed joint course w/ Harvard Kennedy School of Government | Harvard Kennedy School Negotiation Project - Coaching Clinic
Psychology | Language Citation: French
Additional studies in Brazilian Portuguese + Italian
Completed courses @ Harvard Graduate School of Education
Certifications
Awards
Selected into a global community of professional fellows, recognized for their historical contributions to social impact, as well as their "outstanding potential to effectively lead across cultures, innovate, and create even more social impact in their lives and careers."
As part of the Institute, Fellows further develop human-centered design thinking, global leadership, shared-value, and social enterprise know-how. Fellows work together to learn and share best-practices through case-based learning, exposure to thought-leaders, coaching & mentoring, and through highly skilled service projects.
Cohort 10 - Mexico City
Volunteering
HLAA National Board
2020 - Present Vice President of Governance
2018-2020 Director at-Large + HGSE Representative
Activate your HLAA membership + join our newsletter! harvardlatino.sigs.harvard.edu/memsub.html
Writing
Published in: Empowering Teachers to Build a Better World: How Six Nations Support Teachers for 21st Century Education. Fernando M. Reimers (Editor)
Co-Author, Chapter 4: Policies for Teacher Professionalization in Mexico’s Education Reform
Hrusa, Niki A. (et al.)
This book presents a comparative study on how large-scale professional development programs for teachers are designed and implemented. Around the world, governments and educators are recognizing the need to educate students in a broad range of higher order cognitive skills and socio-emotional competencies, and providing effective opportunities for teachers to develop the expertise needed to teach these skills is a crucial aspect of effective implementation of curricula which include those goals.
This study examines how large-scale efforts to empower teachers for deeper instruction have been designed, how they have been implemented, and their outcomes. To do so, it investigates six programs from England, Colombia, Mexico, India, and the United States. Though all six are intended to broaden and deepen students’ curricular aspirations, each takes this expansion of curricular goals in a different direction.
The ambitious education reforms studied here explicitly focus on building teachers’ capacity to teach on a broader set of goals. Through a discerning analysis of program documents, evaluations, and interviews with senior leaders and participants in the programs, the book identifies the various theories of action used in these programs, examines how they were implemented, and discusses what they achieved. As such, it offers an indispensable resource for education leaders interested in designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers that are aligned with ambitious instructional goals.
ISBN-13: 978-9811521362
ISBN: 978-981-15-2137-9
Open access download: springer.com/gp/book/978981…
Paperback: amazon.com/Empowering-Tea…