Nitzan Pelman opened the New York region of Citizen Schools in September of 2007 and serves as its founding Executive Director. In her role as ED, she oversees a state office comprised of 80 staff members who in turn work with approximately 800 students in 6 public schools in 3 boroughs. Citizen Schools has grown by over 230% since its inception and Nitzan has raised over $10 million for CSNY over 4 years. Citizen Schools was founded in 1995 to bring new solutions to the education reform landscape and seeks to reimage the school day.
Prior to joining Citizen Schools, she worked at the New York City Department of Education for four years in the Klein/Bloomberg administration. In that time, she served as the Assistant Director of the Office of New Teacher Induction and helped create a mentoring program for 6,500 new teachers. In her final year at the DOE, she developed, designed, and implemented the citywide "learning environment survey" administered to 1.8 million people through the Office of Accountability. She also served as the first Development Director for Teach For America New York where she organized its first New York City benefit.
Nitzan has participated in CORO's Leadership New York program and served in special project capacities at KIPP and at New Leaders for New Schools. She is a graduate of New York University's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and Stern College for Women.
Cadhla (pronounced “Keely”) Ball began her work in education at the Public Education Network, a national non-profit organization focused on policy reform in public high schools. She taught Humanities for four years in an inclusive, mixed-grade classroom at a small school in Albany, NY, where her curriculum focused on experiential and inquiry-based learning. Cadhla has also taught abroad in Barbados and China. For the past five and a half years, Cadhla has worked as a professional development advisor with the National Academy for Excellent Teaching, where she worked closely with three schools in the South Bronx, in a campus-based coaching model. She has served as a consultant to the Metropolitan School Study Council at Teachers College, to the Institute for Student Achievement and to the Teaneck Public Schools in New Jersey on the topics of literacy, differentiation and inquiry.
Cadhla received her BA in English Literature from Union College and Masters degrees in Curriculum & Teaching and English Education from Teachers College Columbia University. She is currently in a doctoral program at Teachers College studying urban school reform and teacher learning. Cadhla has been the Program Director since July 2009.
Alena Bloom is the Development and Evaluation Manager, overseeing public and foundation grants management. Alena joined Citizen Schools New York in November 2008 as a consultant, joined the staff in January 2009 as the State Coordinator, and moved into her current role in June 2009. Alena graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in American Culture, and studied at Neve Yerushalayim in Jerusalem, Israel, for one year subsequently.
Allyson Crawford leads Citizen Schools New York’s fundraising efforts and partnership pipeline development. She is responsible for raising the annual budget, developing corporate and individual relationships and managing the board. Allyson joined the team in July 2010 as Director of Development. Allyson previously worked for Teach for America for two years as a corps member in Los Angeles and most recently for five years as the Program Director & Grant Writer for Physicians’ Continuing Education, Corp. in New York. Allyson graduated from Oberlin College with a double BA in Latin Language and Literature and Ancient Greek Language and Literature.
Juan Taveras is the Campus Recruitment Manager for Citizen Schools New York. Prior to this role, he was the Operations Manager. Before joining the team in July of 2010, he was managing the operations, talent and sales functions for Legion NY, an executive transportation business in Brooklyn. Prior to that he held management and leadership roles in the retail and hospitality industries. Juan graduated from Syracuse University in 2006 with a B.S. in Hospitality Management.
Danielle Sharon is responsible for cultivating corporate partnerships and oversees volunteer recruitment for Citizen Schools across New York City.
Before joining the Citizen Schools team, Danielle worked at Teach For America in corporate and foundation fundraising, where she helped develop new volunteer engagement initiatives. Prior to her work in development, Danielle collaborated with New York City Public School principals to identify and meet teacher hiring needs as a member of Teach For America’s school relations team. Previously, she also served as a campaign director, organizing grassroots fundraising campaigns and voter registration efforts. Danielle holds a B.A. Summa Cum Laude from New York University with a double major in Sociology and Spanish Language and Literature.
Brian O'Neil is responsible for the cultivation and management of partnerships with other non-profit organizations and institutions of higher education across New York City.
Before joining the CSNY team, Brian worked for CSNJ in Newark as their Volunteer and Development Coordinator through Americorps VISTA, where he developed relationships with universities and individual volunteers. Previously, Brian worked in the field for several political campaigns; recruiting, training and organizing volunteers to help canvass their neighborhood to register voters, identify voter preference and persuade voters to support candidates. Brian has a B.A. from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey with a double major in Political Science and Psychology.
Britt Neuhaus supports teaching fellows in implementing a curriculum that prepares students for success in high school, college and beyond. She also works to increase Citizen Schools’ impact by recruiting new partnerships with universities, non-profits, and businesses in the Bronx and Westchester area as a Civic Engagement Manager.
Previously, Britt worked with Junior Achievement, an education non-profit seeking to advance financial literacy and workplace readiness for kids. She has served as a teacher for the majority of her professional career, working in public schools in the Bronx and Washington Heights for three years as a Teach For America corps member. Britt was a Latin American Studies major at Middlebury College and has a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Pace University.
Chauncey Nartey worked as a high school history teacher in the School District of Philadelphia as a Teach for America Corps Member. He also has worked at the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, as well as the Office of the Mayor Pro Tempore Cora Cole-McFadden in Durham, NC. Chauncey earned his BA in Political Science and Public Policy Studies from Duke University and has studied at Cité Universitaire in Geneva, Switzerland. Chauncey joined the Citizen Schools team in July 2009.
Meghan Pierce joined Citizen Schools in October of 2009 as a Campus Director. Meghan taught for Teach For America as a first grade teacher in New York, and continued teaching for three more years, serving as both a teacher and a Literacy Coordinator. In the final three years, she taught middle school Mathematics and served as the sixth grade team leader. Meghan graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Spanish and a minor in Linguistics.
Lauren Long-Garcia taught for Teach For America in Washington Heights for three years. She taught dual-language first and second grade students. She moved on to teach for Uncommon Schools for one year as a lead second grade teacher in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Lauren graduated from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC with a BA in Anthropology and Spanish for International Service and proceeded to obtain her Master’s Degree from Pace University in Teaching. Lauren joined Citizen Schools in July 2010.
Kim Sekel began her educational career as a middle school teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She designed and taught several courses at The Philippa Schuyler Middle School for the Gifted and Talented, including Finance, Journalism, and an advanced English Language Arts class that focused on literary analysis, critical thinking and writing, and Shakespearean performance. In 2007, Kim transitioned from teaching students to training teachers as the Manager of Middle School Programs at the New-York Historical Society. She focused specifically on training teachers to use primary source documents and multi-media resources to teach literacy and American History. In addition, she managed the N-YHS's high school internship program, in which NYC high school students created supplementary audio materials in support of the exhibition Grant and Lee in War and Peace.
Kim earned her Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of Scranton, and her Master's degree in teaching from Pace University. Kim joined Citizen Schools in June 2010.
John Lindquist taught for two years as a high school math teacher in the Bronx as a Teach For America corps member. He continued on as the primary instructional coach for a group of 12 new teachers during Teach for America’s 2008 summer institute. Following, he served as a Program Director for three additional years. Concurrently, he worked as an Educational Consultant for the newly launched Blue Engine as a curriculum-developer. John graduated from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota with a BA in Mathematics and Economics, Concentration in Policy Analysis. Afterward, John received a Master’s Degree from Pace University in Science of Teaching. John joined Citizen Schools in July 2010.
Sorbrique “Sorby” Grant taught fourth grade self-contained English as a Second Language (ESL) in the South Bronx with Teach for America (TFA). Before TFA, she received her Bachelors in Government and American Studies from Cornell University. While at Cornell she began her non-profit journal by serving as the Executive Director of a volunteer management and community development non-profit in Ithaca, NY. For the past four years, Sorby has worked on supporting TFA on writing upper elementary curriculum support tools, wrote, planned and facilitated the first ESL Day, a day-long training for NYC ESL Corps Members and worked at the NYC Summer Institute as a Curriculum Specialist as well as a School Director. In addition to teaching she worked with various non-profit youth social service agencies. One such organization was the Ya-Ya Network, a counter military recruitment organization that advocated for more robust legislation and accountability surrounding New York City's Opt-Out policies as well as provided accurate and feasible post graduation non-military options for low-income students of color. She has also worked closely with two youth organizations that cater to the needs of LGBTQ youth, a youth drop in center Project Reach, and Sylvia’s Place a LGBTQ homeless shelter. Most recently Sorby graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she received a Masters in Public Policy and Urban Planning. While at Harvard, Sorby founded the LGBTQ Policy Journal which is the first journal in the United States to focus solely on policies affecting LGBTQ communities.
