In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by Juliana Finegan and Hayley Spira-Bauer. Juliana is the vice president of strategy and learning for the company Vivi. She is a passionate educator and leader with experience inside and outside the classroom and host of Vivi’s Educator Pineapple Podcast.
Hayley is the chief academic officer for iTutor.com, a member of the advisory board at Inspiring Educators, and an edtech mentor in StartEd. Hayley is an educator who specializes in elementary education and curriculum development. She hosts a podcast called Learning Can’t Wait.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“I think, you see common threads from conversations to which also impact how you look at what you're doing, and you look at your product because I think that that's like it's not measurable.”
“I think common language is key to have those conversations and really fill those gaps strategically. And to build those partnerships and foster that, like continued engagement is like, let's make sure we're talking about the same thing.”
“Every person you meet in your life has something that brings value to your world, and it is your job to or to the world, excuse me, not your world, the world, it is your job to find out what that is.”
Connect with us:
Juliana Finegan LinkedIn | Vivi Website | Educator Pineapple Podcast
Hayley Spira-Bauer LinkedIn | iTutor Website | Learning Can't Wait Podcast
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by Juliana Finegan and Hayley Spira-Bauer. Juliana is the vice president of strategy and learning for the company Vivi. She is a passionate educator and leader with experience inside and outside the classroom and host of Vivi’s Educator Pineapple Podcast.
Hayley is the chief academic officer for iTutor.com, a member of the advisory board at Inspiring Educators, and an edtech mentor in StartEd. Hayley is an educator who specializes in elementary education and curriculum development. She hosts a podcast called Learning Can’t Wait.
Some Questions We Ask:
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
Quotes:
“I think, you see common threads from conversations to which also impact how you look at what you're doing, and you look at your product because I think that that's like it's not measurable.”
“I think common language is key to have those conversations and really fill those gaps strategically. And to build those partnerships and foster that, like continued engagement is like, let's make sure we're talking about the same thing.”
“Every person you meet in your life has something that brings value to your world, and it is your job to or to the world, excuse me, not your world, the world, it is your job to find out what that is.”
Connect with us:
Juliana Finegan LinkedIn | Vivi Website | Educator Pineapple Podcast
Hayley Spira-Bauer LinkedIn | iTutor Website | Learning Can't Wait Podcast
Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn
Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn
About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook
Hello, and welcome to build momentum, a show where we explore thought leadership and education. I'm Sarah Williamson, the founder of SWPR Group.
Katie Lash:And I'm Katie Lash, the director of the East Central Educational Service Center.
Sarah Williamson:Together, we explore how to leverage key partners, your constituencies, and the media to authentically impact your organizations and the leaders who champion them. We can't wait to get started. So let's dive into today's show. It's so fun to have two powerful female leaders in ed tech on our show today. Welcome Juliana Finegan, the VP of strategy and learning at Vivi and Hayley Spira-Bauer, the chief academic officer at iTutor. Welcome to Build Momentum. Thanks for joining us,
Juliana Finegan:thanks for having
Hayley Spira-Bauer:having us. We're just gonna speak the rest of the podcast at the exact same moment,
Juliana Finegan:I was gonna say, having us together, it's gonna be a problem.
Katie Lash:I think it sounds like a lot of fun, but you all know each other. I don't know as much about you. So can I start with you, Juliana, tell us about yourself and who you are, what you do, how you got to where you are.
Juliana Finegan:Okay, so I was a high school chemistry and eighth grade science teacher for 10 years and Title One schools in California and then worked for graduate school of education where I got to build teacher prep around blended learning my claim to fame was I got to visit about 60 schools across the country to identify common denominators and build teacher prep around that move to a nonprofit where I work to scale effective, engaging equitable education across the country and really thinking through how do we bring as leaders together to actually find those common threads and support those as a collaborative and then moved over to Vivi, where I now work with educators, leaders and our global team to ensure we're actually building product that's not adding noise, but really something that can help build teacher capacity and impact student learning, and research based way. So I learned a lot about business in probably the last eight months, like just terms in general Hayley's laughing because like, I didn't know what GTM was when I started and I was like, oh, Go To Market got it. So
Katie Lash:I'm glad you defined it in the your statement, cuz I didn't know.
Juliana Finegan:I was like, I'm bringing a lot of like, you know, educator language, and I'm learning a lot of business. But it's also been really exciting to work for a company who's like, how can we really impact and support educators and students. So it's really cool. Yeah, that's mean, and I live in Seattle. You will not hear the dogs this time. And I have two kids, two dogs very PNW, and a RV, but I grew up in Jersey weird
Sarah Williamson:PNW(inaudible) Pacific Northwest, just so you know.
Katie Lash:That was not business lingo.
Sarah Williamson:Number one out,
Katie Lash:but yeah, we're like covering the whole country right now in this room in this Zoom Room, whatever. Whatever room we're in zoom Casper room. So yeah, that's awesome. Juliana, I'm looking forward to understanding more about Vivi. But, Haley, tell us about you.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Sure. So much like Juliana I began my career in the classroom, I was a Teach for America core member in the South Bronx at a public school called PS 55. Under the leadership who is still the leader there of Luis Torres. And after my time teaching it, PS 55, I actually moved to a charter school in Harlem, and I was a teacher and a middle school and eventually found an elementary school with a whole bunch of really smart people became a school leader there, both on the behavioral side and the academic side and move back to the middle school because it needed where I was at that network for about a decade after I was at that network, I was looking for opportunities to really promote equitable best practices for education beyond one school, and I found iTutor. And I've been here for five and a half years when I joined iTutor we were an edtech company. Without a robust Ed, meaning we really had a lot of opportunity to develop our educators build our pipeline support schools really have a profound impact on students lives. In the past five and a half years, we've done things like achieved status as a digital learning institute via cognitive and IDR. with Johns Hopkins University and Instructional Design Review, I'm just going to define every single term we say today, but really had just an unbelievable amount of growth with our school partners. And I am most proud of being a part of an organization that allows for this state of education, where we are today in this it's not post pandemic, whatever we're in right now allows for the future of education to be built upon how we're serving schools today. So super excited to talk about that with all you today.
Sarah Williamson:So impressive, Haley, I had no idea that you actually found a school a middle school. Wow,
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Elementary Yeah, we open two elementary schools in four days and it was unbelievable with the smartest people and one of them is actually so in Juliana knows you may know as well is the peloton like superstar Jessica Sims, like we opened we were both kindergarten teachers next door to one another. And now she's really cool doing all sorts of other kinds of teaching.
Juliana Finegan:Oh my god, I'm fangirling so hard Right now I love my jams. I mean, Haley knows when I travel. That's my jam.
Sarah Williamson:Awesome. Okay, so I'm also so impressed with you. So Haley, clearly your passion is contagious. It's amazing. But you're also impressive chief academic officers typically do not spearhead thought leadership for company so I'm really wowed by how you've been able to externally share your story. Can you talk about how you really jumped started that process? For iTutor?
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Can I just answer with like, I'm a motormouth, does not. So you know, I don't know, Sarah, when we met, I said to you, like, I don't really know what PR is, like. I know, I personally believe deeply in a whole bunch of things. One of them being that our education system is fundamentally broken. Right now, it was systematically designed to be beneficial for a select group of people. And that has not been redesigned in 200 years. And so what we're facing today is a lot more spotlights on a lot of problems. And I just don't stop talking about it. Like, if you catch me in the supermarket, I'm probably talking about it. If you catch me on my podcast, I'm likely also discussing it when I'm running my company meetings, like I'm definitely talking about it there, too. So I don't know, unfortunately, that there's design behind why I do this. But I am deeply dedicated to the work of educational liberation. And so I don't know if there's really a way to stop me from talking about it, which may have beneficially resulted in itutor having a lot of people talk and not just me, but like a lot of people talking about how our work does that for this space.
Sarah Williamson:Wow. Thank you. I love what you're doing. Thank you so much. That's awesome.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Thank you,
Sarah Williamson:You're doing a great job. Even if you don't know what you're doing, you're doing it
Hayley Spira-Bauer:It's nice, like when I meet folks that are, you know, really intentional. And really, you know, I know there's a strategy behind this, and I'd love to learn it. I really do love learning. For me, it's just this is kind of who I am and how I show up. You know, my kids probably sound like parents of me being like, well, that's not a fair practice. You know, it's like their poor teachers or like, their mom, like what's happening? You know, it's just kind of how I am.
Sarah Williamson:That's awesome. Love it.
Katie Lash:So Haley, you kind of went here just now. But tell us more about how you have that internal support with your team. And so how you bring the academic perspective, and then you get that message out? Tell us more.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:So I think what's important to note about the space that we're in ad tech in general, and the development of products for schools, is that it has to be inextricably linked to the schools themselves. Right? Actually, if it's not a it won't be utilized B it won't be effective, and hopefully C, it will be discarded. And so it's not really difficult to get the folks that I get to collaborate with the brilliant folks on our product team manager engineering team, to be thinking about what is best for schools, because they are deeply concerned with that question as well. And that is, in my opinion, as I've learned more about product like, Juliana, you mentioned, you're now this is like as I get to a space where you have to know about products, you know, in the past couple years, I understand that is good product design, you have to know your stakeholders, you have to know what they want, you have to be talking to them regularly. And thankfully, that's a priority for our organization as it relates to the impact element. I mean, our organization is really keen on talking about our values constantly. An impact is one of them. So if we're not talking about impact, we're not living by our values. And we have a problem. So again, makes it really easy to talk about with folks. I appreciate that some of our product team right now is comprised of folks that used to serve on my teams, in academics. And so that makes it way easier to have a conversation folks that have been in education. Juliana, you need that too, right? Like you just said, I am bringing a lot of the education language and they're bringing you out of the business. Like you have to have educators in edtech otherwise, it's not going to be products built for students and teachers and administrators. It's just not
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, they're co designing the products with you, right, these educators in the classroom. Yeah, that's what we just heard from Kristina Ishmael, who was just on our show. Thanks, Juliana for the intro. But she mentioned
Hayley Spira-Bauer:talking about tech week too, she gave this like really short spiel that I listened to. And I met her through Juliana's, too, because Julianne is a connector. It's one of the amazing things about her. But she said that, like someone said, like, what is like one piece of advice he would give and her response was, you know, talk to schools and and like she gets it. And if she's at the top and she gets it, then we all better get it too.
Sarah Williamson:Right. We were just meeting with all4ed President CEO, Deb Delisle this morning. And she said, one of the most important practices that she thinks we can do is for lobbying, because they're doing a lot of lobbying and policy creation through their organization. And she said she used to resent lobbyists, and now she understands. That's why it's so important to work together with those superintendents and those educators and to weave them into the decisions and policy that they're creating.
Juliana Finegan:And bringing and just like all different parts of the elephant, right, and making sure that we're all like leveraging each other's like expertise and superpowers to really impact that but like making sure that everyone's voices is heard and that they have the ability to highlight and impact that whole process as well.
Sarah Williamson:Yes, yes, yes. Yes.
Juliana Finegan:Sorry. I jumped
Sarah Williamson:Get in there. Alright. So, on that note, one of the reasons, Juliana that we wanted to chat with you, first of all, I've been seeing and hearing about you for a while when I met you. Oh, yeah. And when I met you, Bret Roer said, Oh, that one, you must know that one. She cultivate incredible relationships. And so one of the things we do in PR is we're always identifying influencers, we're pairing them up with their clients for panels, we're really trying to collaborate with people who are leading the way and align our clients with those individuals and those people because they're making change, and they're making the impact. How have you been able to do that throughout your career? And how are you doing that? Now for Vivi tell us
Juliana Finegan:it was really funny when I was reading this question, because it was like, I don't know. It's like, I honestly think building partnerships is about just that. It needs to be like a true partnership. And it needs to be built on genuinely wanting to help each other and work together for the greater good. And like that sounds super cheesy. I totally get that. But like also seeing that we each have roles. And we're better together. Like we're better as the collective. Because we all have different experience, lived experience expertise, and how can we all work together to push this forward. And it was funny, I just met with somebody before this, who one of my friends introduced me to was like, hey, I want you to talk to her. She's like, looking at different positions and jobs and blah, blah. I was like, great. And I was like, You should talk to Haley, you should talk to this person. Here's a list of different jobs and EdSurge and dadada. And then she was like, so I feel really bad. Like, what can I do for you? And I was like, I'm not doing this so that you can do something for me. I was like, I just, you know, you genuinely want to help bring each other up, I think is like kind of the big dorky mantra. But it was funny when you said influencer, like I immediately thought of like Instagram influencers, which like are like, you know, sitting in silo by themselves. Whereas I think I'm been really blessed to have truly amazing partners who do influence the field, but by bringing strong communities together.
Sarah Williamson:Yes. Exactly
Juliana Finegan:And I think that's the biggest thing is like, bringing the people around them, like education is truly a team sport. Like, I totally believe that. And also, there has to be like, a I joke with Haley with this where it's like, if she connects with someone through me, I'm like, super excited if that friendship like flourishes past me like, because that's what's supposed to happen. Right? So how do you build those partnerships in a way that's like, also not limited? And like with Vivi, for instance, and sorry, every role I've done, I've built communities. So like, at the Learning accelerator, I did the innovation directors network, we brought together 18 directors of innovation across the country to say like, you don't have to be on islands, let's work together. You know, let's identify common practices. And then at Vivi, I started the Vivi educator Council, which is 2312 in Australia and 11 in the US, where we brought together like directors of technology or technology implementation and said, like, what do you need? What's working? What's not working? How can we capture and codify your best practices? So I think this whole idea of like codifying those relationships is by like, just being genuine and saying, like, how can we help?
Sarah Williamson:Yeah, love those words. How can we help or
Katie Lash:Juliana? Juliana, I'm so excited to meet you. not using Because I feel like we're like channeling one another like, so this next I just got back this earlier from the state superintendents like Association meeting. And last evening, I was with a big group. And they said something about that, like, I was owning the table. Well, I didn't own the table, like at all, but I was just always like, Hey, do you know, does Do you know this person, because if you don't know this person, you do need to know each other. And like, here's what this person does at their school. And I'm always doing stuff like that. But my service center, right, I'm limited to region, maybe some connection in the state. So I'm curious, how do you have that on such a national scale? How do you meet these people? What are you doing through the lens to identify these partnerships? Like who should know who who should know who?
Juliana Finegan:It's a great question. So I will say that I think my ability to connect across the country really did start off with this innovation directors network that I did with the learning accelerator. To be totally frank, it started as teacher think tanks. We were like, who are the people that need to be connected? And so I really like beer and probably not part of education. But like, so what? Sorry, but basically, I did eight happy hours across the country and different regions, and how to map breweries and invited teachers principals, Hayley, you may not know this, teachers, principals, heads of IHC and said like, let's talk about the challenges of San Diego. Let's talk about the challenges of Chicago. Let's talk about the challenges DC to identify like what is geographic centric and what is like East ecosystem you know, across the board And then I was able to identify who are the people that are like really living on islands and maybe asking themselves if they're crazy. And it was like the directors of innovation or the directors of personalized learning. And we were like, how can we bring them together to build this community of camaraderie that they can say, I'm trying to build this, has anyone tried this, let's not reinvent the wheel. And so I, we kicked it off with 18 directors of innovation from across the country, which was like DC public schools, Dallas, CPS, Highline all over the board, right, Greeley. And that really helped me to connect with some amazing, like Ed leaders across the country who have then gone to other places, or are still there. And they continually teach me but I think with that community, and when you're thinking, like, at scale, across a whole country, you have to think about common language, too. I think common language is key to have those conversations and really fill those gaps strategically. And to build those partnerships and foster that, like continued engagement is like, let's make sure we're talking about the same thing. Let's identify what we're talking about. And let's connect those dots. And then from there, you're very quickly able to find those common denominators, those common challenges, those common barriers, and also places where maybe you have a barrier, but somebody else has actually done work around that already. How do we share those learnings more broadly? So I think a lot of it is it starts with how do we bring together the right people that are open and want to truly partner and build those relationships between those people and then speak the same language. And I think that is when we think about capturing, codifying, and scaling best practices. Language is I mean, I can't, like highlight double underline, more like language is key. Because otherwise someone's like, no, that's not what I'm talking about. It's like, how do you boil it down? You know, so many times you say, Let's do station rotation. And someone's like, I don't do that I do centers. And I'm like, you know, it's same thing, right?
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Like, we're on the same page,
Juliana Finegan:like, you know, and then you say, personalized, and you're like, Well, how, like I always say, don't talk about big P talk about little P personalizing education through differentiation and scaffolding. It doesn't have to be like, quote, unquote, personalized learning, because that language can change the conversation. So kind of went off on the side. But I think that's where like, you bring people together, and that community is still so tight. We have virtual happy hours, we text each other when we're like, hitting a challenge. I was like, I need help with this Dwayne Maclary has sticker is on my laptop that says just do right by students, Kristen Watkins, and Dallas is still rocking it and rolling it. So um, Rebecca Kim was on my podcast, a lot of them are just still friends as well.
Sarah Williamson:Awesome. It sounds like the common denominator is providing value and coming from the place of how can we help? And how can we serve? Instead of who do we want to align with? And how can we leverage their influence? I mean, like really being a good thought partner and supporting them first. Yeah.
Juliana Finegan:And I think that everyone wants to help. I mean, you're in education, because you want to impact education, you want to change the way we're doing it, you want to help students and you want to help teachers, right? Like, that's why we got into this. And so I think it's like always finding that common ground. And then you will have, like, a cheerleader for life when you like, build those kinds of just like, you know, real partnerships, and then you're able to move things. Because like the needle is hard to move. There's a lot of places people are learning.How do we get to all of them
Sarah Williamson:that needle is busy.
Juliana Finegan:It's working overtime right now. So yeah.
Sarah Williamson:Are you looking to build brand awareness and expand your impact as an organization, but maybe you're struggling to find the ROI with your general marketing and PR efforts, it could be time to try something a little different. At SWPR Group, we approach every organization through the lens of how we can help them add the most value to the conversations that are happening in education today for one of our clients, the Institute for Education innovation, this led to the launch of Supe's choice, an award that we co created to build incredible brand awareness and his firmly established organization as an industry leader driving impact, growth and awareness on every level for Edmentum. This meant, the launch of thought leadership panels at education conferences, and a new webinar series featuring influencers and partners that are making a difference in education. What will your success story be? Let me know when you're ready to get started. Reach out at Sarah sarah@swpr-group.com We look forward to hearing from you
Katie Lash:something that I think is Sarah you bring up a good point that like sat genuine not trying to align for a purpose but what I've noticed sometimes is folks won't talk about the cool things they're doing so sometimes they need a third party person to be like know what you're doing is so cool. And you need to tell people about this and people are like modest and I'm so sometimes it's like you two need to align. They didn't even know that they want To align, we had to tell them they had to,
Juliana Finegan:oh, that is my favorite part, I will tell you because when I was at the Learning accelerator, I got to work with all these leaders to capture and codify their best practices, right? So I'd say, tell me what you're doing. And like Erica Baker from Chicago, public schools, when I was just like, telling me all this stuff, and she was like, and then this and then this, and I'm like, Do you realize how incredible that is? Tell me more about your coaching stuff you're doing and tell me about this. And then I'm like, can you actually give me some resources, I'm gonna build it and share it on the TLA website so that other people can start from there and use it. And she's like, and you know, just hearing people say like, yeah, okay, that's really cool. And she's gonna be so embarrassed that I said her name. But there's, I think so many people doing, like you said amazing things in education, but they're not able to pick up their head and say, like, give myself a pat on the back. And what I'm doing is just is innovative and is changing, like the way we're looking at education. And so
Hayley Spira-Bauer:Can I name something? And I've talked about this, like on my podcast before, but let's like contextualize why that's probably happening. In education we are primarily talking about women and women especially are not conditioned to celebrate, to brag to announce their successes, their wins their triumphs, even if it's at the benefit of deserving students, right? Deserving like rising tide lifts all ships Juliana you named, like, we're all in this for the impact. Agreed. So yes, they're overwhelmed. The folks are overwhelmed. They don't lift their heads up, agreed. And I think there's some sort of gender as we sit as for women on this call right now, I think there's some sort of gender element to this, that education is very stuck in due to so much leadership being well, actually top leadership superintendents, not as many women. But below that level, we got a lot of ladies and so are female, identifying people. And so I want to just name that and call it out. Because I don't think it's an accident or happenstance.
Sarah Williamson:Wow, Mic drop,
Katie Lash:Sarah, we haven't talked about it on the podcast. But we have said that a lot. I've always there
Sarah Williamson:heck yeah! so anytime we're chatting about something, Katie will say, Well, do you think I should do this? I always say what a man asked me this question. No, he would not. So it's something we think about a lot. Just in our everyday work, just coming from a different lens. Being proud of our work, sharing. Yes. Let's try to how can we do that? How can we support women
Hayley Spira-Bauer:totally uplift them? Yeah. And I mean, suffice to say important to name people of color as well, right, like another historically, systemically oppressed population exceedingly important. So exactly. It's not just sure but other marginalized communities too.
Sarah Williamson:Thank you, Haley. Okay, are
Hayley Spira-Bauer:you sad? Aren't you like now you're really getting this is why I just motormouth, right?
Sarah Williamson:No. Oh, yeah. We don't screw up these we always say it's just a general question. They're not scripted. But yes, Haley. Thank you. All right. So now I want to talk about you Haley, and your podcast and all the interesting topics you get into. So you've done this for a while you both have podcasts. So it's one of the reasons we wanted to invite you on the show, because you're both killing it. Haley, you've been at it for a while, though, and you're consistent, and you have incredible content. So tell me how you got started, how you say one of the hardest parts is staying consistent. So share more,
Hayley Spira-Bauer:it is my favorite part of my job. So it's like not hard to stay consistent. I get to talk to brilliant people, I get to learn from incredible folks. And especially I get to illuminate and uplift the work that they're doing in a field that I'm obviously quite passionate about. And so I think it's really easy for me to stay consistent because of that. The second thing I'll name is that in doing this work, I am hoping that folks are like having a water cooler moment with what's being built, what's progressing, what's innovative in education. I am obsessed with Guy Raz is how I built this. And anyone who asks me about well, what do you want your packets to be? I'm kind of like, I want to how I built this for education, because of what we're talking about. Because of this idea that rising tide lifts all ships, students deserve better than things kept in secrets in the corner. And if we know something works, if we know it has impact for children, and I will say ancillary, but not secondary to is impactful for teachers, right? The people that are at the center of all this and who matter the most, then we should be sharing it widely. And so I hope the podcast does that. And it makes it really easy. Because every week I get to meet new folks and I get to meet them through folks like Juliana She's introduced me to I don't even know how many guests now and other folks like Brett Roer who he mentioned on the call earlier, he introduced me to David Adams, who was just on a really awesome episode. And the list goes on, but I just feel like I look forward to it. And that helps me with being consistent. Plus, I work with some really incredible people, which I've named a few times that helped make it possible. So there are some awesome folks that are helping to get it off the ground each week making sure that I hold myself accountable to the launch dates that I say well and yeah happen.
Sarah Williamson:Okay, what is your podcasts you didn't tell us your name and where are you look and find it.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:iTutor's website at i tutor.com. If you scroll to the bottom or you can go to Apple, Spotify anywhere you listen to podcasts pod bean and find learning can't wait.
Sarah Williamson:We love it.
Katie Lash:Great. Can I say one thing to talk about another connector Brett Roer. We've said his name a couple of times. But did you know that Brett knows Kesha? Brett knows. Anyway?
Hayley Spira-Bauer:I did not. But I know you just had him on recently. Like where you're with him. Right? Like, again, another connector that Giuliana met what you like sat at a table at ASU GSV.
Juliana Finegan:Right. He sat at my table because I found a table in the sun at ASU GSV and I was like, I just need a tan because I lived in San Diego for 10 years. And now I'm in Seattle and I just needed vitamin D when I can get it. And he's like, is it okay if I sit with you? And I was like, Sure. Who are you? The rest is history.
Sarah Williamson:The rest is history. Oh my goodness. Yeah. The two Brett and Juliana together could conquer the world, that's for sure.
Juliana Finegan:For sure,
Sarah Williamson:but he does know Kesha. Yeah, we were very,
Juliana Finegan:I don't know Kesha I feel. Now I want too.
Katie Lash:Yeah, like knows Kesha might be a stretch? Like has talked to Kesha. Maybe? I don't know. But still. That counts
Hayley Spira-Bauer:that counts in my book.
Sarah Williamson:Oh my gosh. Okay. So thank you, Haley. Love your podcast. Juliana. You just launched education pineapple podcast. How's it going? You just launched it kicked it?
Juliana Finegan:I did. So first off, I have to say a big thank you to Hayley. I mean, I just feel like this is very, you know, incestuous conversation, which is totally fine. Basically, like, So Haley, I'm going to start doing a podcast for Vivi help. And so she really helped me to be like, Okay, here's how you organize it here. Like, this was not something. I can be very extroverted in person, but it takes a lot of work for me. And so like the podcasts, I was like, the first one, I think I like sweat. The whole episode, like my heart was pounding the whole thing. I've gotten better, y'all, you know, now I'm calmer. But it's going really well. And it's the educator pineapple podcast, because that's a big PD thing I used to do is like everyone has a everyone has a crown, and everyone's writing something. And it builds that culture of vulnerability that like even people with like huge crowds are always ripening something and something sometimes the thing you ripening turns into your crown, and how do those two pieces influence your work? And so everyone who joins the podcast has started in the classroom. So actually, some of like the people, you'd be surprised like, where they started, what they taught how they taught, and so just really talking about how did you start there? And then where did you go from there? So I've had you know, quite a few people join on just most recently had Marlin Stiles and Ki Edwards share about the admiral squad and Middletown, they are doing building a pipeline of black male educators. So really focused on the 2%, which is really cool. They just came on. And then I had John Claude Broussard, who's a great friend who I was like, you're gonna be my first one here who was nothing but actually talking about when he started in the classroom in New York City. And so getting to talk with Kristina, I just edited her as Kristina Ishmael. Like I feel bad. If I don't mention anybody like Rebecca Kim's on there, she just did her dissertation on strength based data literacy. So thinking through how do we give a better data profile of our students? And I think that so all of the different topics and Saba, could we like Liz, Arnie, all the topics are around, what are some areas of work they're doing, but then also, you can come back to the website to come back to the Vivi site and see resources on how to put it into action. So my whole goal is against not reinventing the wheel, but saying, Okay, we're talking about strength based data literacy with Rebecca, you know, I have a link to a slide deck on how she presented to her district on street data. So really trying to connect those dots to say, okay, not only am I inspired, but how can I put that into action, within my own context, within my own community, and within my own schools, and so really trying to make sure we are, again, like you said before, Katie, like, how do we scale these nationally? And how do we give these folks who are doing such amazing work and education, a platform to share it with like a different audience to really help to give equitable access to everyone. So that's kind of my goal with the educator point of the podcast, it is set up like a teacher lesson plan, just I think Haley was joking, and I was like, we first start with this section. Then we go to this section that we have, it's, you know, I was a teacher as a chemistry teacher. But it's been going well, it's been fun.
Sarah Williamson:Awesome. So one person you might think about having on is Deb Delisle. She's amazing. She'd be an amazing guest.
Juliana Finegan:send her my way.
Sarah Williamson:I will. And congrats to both of you on your podcast success. Love it
Juliana Finegan:Thank you. I don't know if I'm success yet.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:I think you are. But outside And then. Yeah, and, man,
Sarah Williamson:that leads into my next question. Exactly. I was like, that was such a good segue. You know, it's so easy for people to say, why are you doing this? How do we measure this podcast? How do we measure PR? How do we measure your thought leadership? I got an op ed in this trade publication. Sarah, what does that get me? People, a lot of our clients will ask us these questions. And it's interesting, because in PR in this work, we're doing in thought leadership in developing this, like higher level awareness for companies and for leaders of education organizations, it can be difficult to say, oh, that equates to 2.4 leads or that equates to it's not a perfect science. That's my opinion. I'm very biased, clearly. But I would love to hear your thoughts to see if you've had any thoughts in this way. And the work you're doing.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:So like, can you measure it by the connections you make? Can you measure it by the fact that Juliana and I are on this podcast? Can you measure it by the fact that people are adopted? You can't always measure that some of it is intangible, which I know that, you know, business leaders don't love to hear that it's an investment in resources and people's time, which are resources. Of course, this I really struggle with the answer to this, like I really struggle. I know thought leadership is a somewhat nebulous term. I actually, like spent a week googling it about two months ago, being like, how do I? What do I do? How do I say, How do I share? For me like I'm not doing it for that. And like storytelling, really good ideas, which podcasting is storytelling, storytelling, really good ideas and giving airtime to intelligence and impact driven focus? Things like, that feels like enough to me, but I know, I'm not the be all end all on this.
Juliana Finegan:Yeah. And I think we actually talked about this Hayley one time of like, how do you measure it? And how do you measure the impact? And I think that what it has really helped with Vivi is we've been able to like, listen to the podcast, step back and see some of the work that's currently happening and how we can be a player and pushing that work forward with our instructional tools. So I think that like that was kind of like a nice additional piece of just like, because we're talking with these incredible leaders and hearing about the work they're doing. We're like, okay, we're also uncovering some of the challenges that education is facing as well. And along the way, so we're like, okay, how can we help to fill that gap? Or how can we make sure that when we're doing this, that we're thinking about this piece, and so I think that like, it's been really cool, because I get to work with our product team and our engineering team and our sales team and marketing and the CSM. So really trying to say, like, Oh, I just talked about this in the podcasts. And it's also I think, you see common threads from conversations to which also impact how you look at what you're doing, and you look at your product, because I think that that's like it's not measurable. But I do think that like being able to have different vantage points and be able to see those needs from multiple vantage points is in and of itself a huge value add, because you're able to step away from like the weeds. And so I think that's been really helpful.
Katie Lash:This is so interesting, because my question for you guys to wrap us up is about takeaway, but you guys just gave me a takeaway about like, a be idea of isn't it an investment in people like an investment in whoever's engaging in this thought leadership, right? And then it's up to those who go up and engage in this work in this practice to go do something with that, that then maybe it will be measurable, but like, keep that as what you take, like, like after this conversation, I'm gonna learn things from you. I'm gonna do a project and then that project is measurable, but not this interaction right now. Right?
Juliana Finegan:It's a part of those dominoes, right? It's like we're each hitting and some some dominoes you may find out we're hit so long from your conversation, but you have no idea it was really interesting. Actually, Rebecca Kim, who is on my show sent me a screenshot of the text message she got after somebody who used to work with her listen to her episode, and it was just such a heartfelt like this really helped x and it was so good to hear about this and like if she hadn't texted me I wouldn't have known that right like I was like, oh someone listen, I was just excited somebody listened
Hayley Spira-Bauer:that my mom downloads every episode right so like I always get at least one
Juliana Finegan:I realized what I shared educator private podcast can be found on all of those places as well. I will get killed if I don't actually sit or on the video website. You can find it too. But yeah, I think that's where you don't realize those pieces.
Katie Lash:Yeah.
Hayley Spira-Bauer:And I think like selfishly I am better for every single conversation I have literally like I feel more informed I can go do more research and not that I'm the be all end all definitely shouldn't measure it based on my brain but like I literally feel enriched by every conversation I have. I remember back in college this is It's like, I don't know if I share the story. But, you know, we were recruiting for nice sorority, and I remember it was getting a little bit like kind of ugly, and I'm not going to name what sorority or whatever, because y'all can Google that if you want. But this woman that I still to this day, I'm close with who turned out to be my big, big, big, big, whatever, said, Everybody stop, she quieted the room. Everybody stop. Every person you meet in your life has something that brings value to your world, and it is your job to or to the world, excuse me, not your world, the world, it is your job to find out what that is. And that one statement Now mind you, this woman runs like foundational giving for a very large corporation. Now she is incredible, and continues to change the world through her actions and her words, but like that has changed. I think about every single person has something to bring value to the world. And podcasting is a way to let them shine that into the world. I just, i mean...
Sarah Williamson:I think that's our wrap up, Katie.
Katie Lash:I love that. I think that we can do better now. So we have to.
Juliana Finegan:That's when you just dropped the mic. And you're like, so yeah, talking to you.
Sarah Williamson:Wow, you ladies, this is amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. This is so much fun.
Juliana Finegan:Thank you so much for having us. This was great. I mean, what a way to end the week,
Sarah Williamson:totally
Hayley Spira-Bauer:I know getting to be on a call with all these brilliant, powerful women and talk about things that I think Juliana and I speak for both of us when I say that we love to do and that helps us and just really feels great. So thank you for having me. And for us being together. It was really fun.
Sarah Williamson:More soon from us. We're gonna get together again, I know it. Thank you all. If you're looking for more of this thought leadership goodness for your organization, you're in the right place. Visit us at swpr-group.com To learn more about how we work with education organizations and their leaders, superintendents and influencers to increase your impact. Again, that's swpr-group.com. Thanks for tuning in today and we will see you next time on Build Momentum.