Senior Director, Reading Universe
Tami was an early pioneer in online learning and professional growth opportunities for PreK-12 teachers. Over the last three decades, she has created and launched award-winning teacher sites including DiscoverySchool.com, Scholastic.com for Teachers, and PBS LearningMedia.org. She has unique expertise in conceiving, designing, and developing content-based services and digital media products geared toward educators.
She began her career as an online research associate for the Educational Resource Information Center on Assessment and Evaluation and an elementary school teacher. Drawing on her experience as a classroom teacher who was not taught how to teach children to read, she's become keenly focused on the national conversations around translating literacy research, bringing evidence to the forefront of reading instruction, and implementing effective professional development for reading teachers.
Tami's commitment to evidence-based reading instruction is also informed by her experience raising a child with dyslexia. The challenge of finding teachers with the training to teach her daughter to read wholeheartedly changed the way Tami approached her work as a teacher, parent, and producer. Once she uncovered the breadth of reading research and found a community of like-minded educators, she committed to using her strategic and production skills to broadcast to every teacher and parent the most effective methods for teaching reading.