S03E23 - Bridging the gap between edtech organizations and K-12 decisionmakers to solve education's most difficult challenges| Doug Roberts, CEO, Institute for Education Innovation (IEI)

In this episode of Build Momentum, Sarah and Katie are joined by Doug Roberts, who is the founder and CEO of the Institute for Education Innovation. IEI specializes in bridging the gaps between individuals and organizations that are committed to seeing students succeed in school and in life. Doug and his team create safe spaces for problem-solving and innovative thinking, including the IEI Summer Summit where this episode was recorded.

Some Questions We Ask:

• Could you tell us why you’re here and what IEI has going on this week? (00:59)
• What is IEI? (02:28)
• What are your thoughts about superintendents’ stress levels and how does IEI support them during difficult times? (02:45)
• Why is it important for edtech companies to have evidence, and how should they be ensuring they have it, especially with ESSER funding dwindling? (05:48)
• How do you think edtech companies are getting it wrong when they focus on AI support for school districts? (11:12)
• What are some of the ways you have committed to increasing the superintendent pipeline, and how do you think others can help support it too? (15:13)
• Tell us more about Supes’ Choice Awards. (21:31)
• You've really worked to build your thought leadership presence throughout the years. Is there anything you would change in the industry in terms of how people publicly try to build their exposure and awareness? (27:45)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• About the IEI Summer Summit (01:11)
• About the Institute for Education Innovation (02:32)
• About superintendents’ stress levels and how IEI supports them  (03:03)
• The importance of evidence and why companies should have it, especially in connection with ESSER funds (06:14)
• What edtech companies do wrong when they focus on AI support for school districts (11:30)
• What IEI Lead is and what it does (15:23)
• Doug and Katie’s perspective on the Supes’ Choice Awards (21:54)
• Katie’s advice for people who want to apply for the Supes’ Choice Awards (26:54)
• Doug’s thought leadership (28:06)

Quotes:

“Evidence is really in the eye of the beholder. That's a decision between a superintendent and her or his cabinet and the actual educators who will implement the thing.”

Connect with Doug:
Doug's Twitter
Email: doug@instituteforedinnovation.com
Doug Robert's LinkedIn
IEI Twitter
IEI Website
Supes' Choice Website

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

Transcript

Sarah Williamson: 0:04

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: 0:13

And I'm Katie Lash, the director of the East Central Educational Service Center.

Sarah Williamson: 0:17

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. On today's episode, we have a really special guest back with us, Doug Roberts, the CEO of the Institute for Education innovation, also known as IEI is joining us welcome Doug,

Doug Roberts: 0:43

Also known as the short guy often featured in social media photos between you two.

Katie Lash: 0:50

That was accurate. I'm not there to take one right now. Take a photo,

Doug Roberts: 0:55

How are you guys? Good to be back on Build Momentum. You guys are awesome.

Sarah Williamson: 0:59

We love having you back. So it has been a really long time. Since you've been on here. I think since Supes Choice. The first year is the last time we had you on but will you tell us why we're here together? What do you have going on this week?

Doug Roberts: 1:11

Yes. So Sarah and I are actually sitting in the same room. It's IEI summer summit in beautiful Sonoma, California. And we're in this place that kind of feels like a cross between the forest of Endor. And like a really fancy hoity toity wine place. It's kind of a neat spot. Lots of big trees and lots of shade and good place to kind of contemplate and reflect recharge for a new year. Our theme is theme this year is all about creating empowering spaces for leaders and advocacy on behalf of leaders. But we're using that word empowered spaces, because that's what people who have come to our events have told us that we have created, if I could tell you how we did that I would love to but I don't know how we did it. It just happened. I think it's a combination of the community and the people and the thoughts and the energy and the affinity and love between members of the group partners, members, guests, etc. So, but I know that superintendents and other district leaders need to feel empowered right now. Because it's pretty hard to feel empowered when you've got a roomful of people who are upset at you about something that has absolutely nothing to do with teaching and learning. And you're trying to figure out how to get back to teaching and learning. And so that's our theme this year is helping our members feel empowered to focus on the stuff that matters for

Sarah Williamson: 2:28

For our listeners who don't know what kids. IEI is, will you tell them?

Doug Roberts: 2:32

Oh sorry. Yes, we are at the Institute for education, innovation, and during our sixth year, we are a national think tank of school superintendents, and a district administration Leadership Academy.

Katie Lash: 2:44

Yeah. Well, he already kind of went there. But

Sarah Williamson: 2:44

Awesome. my question you'd made a very good segue. Well, Doug I know that you've shared recent articles on superintendent stress levels, and some of those were just published this week. What are your thoughts about that? And what do you think that IEI does to support superintendents, you kind of went there, but keep going?

Doug Roberts: 3:02

Sure. So that K 12 Dive piece was really just a kind of summary of a study done by the RAND Corporation. That was just an anecdotal survey, they just surveyed a bunch of superintendents, and it just confirmed what I have been hearing, you know, piecemeal anecdotally for the last year and change like it was, I'm glad. That's what's great about having a group like RAND, that is a legit survey, or whatever you call it

Sarah Williamson: 3:29

Third party.

Doug Roberts: 3:30

Yeah, third party that does surveys

Sarah Williamson: 3:30

Yeah, that's great, Doug. So I am curious. I scientifically, because, you know, we can talk about it. But those guys, you know, have now put a stamp of they sort of ratified this idea that superintendenting has gotten ridiculously hard. And that the the top reason why people are saying they're well, that's what the study said was that know, I've heard you speak recently about this in your superintendents are way more stressed out than the average adult. So your fortune 500, vice president who has to hit numbers, your grocery store clerk, just I don't know how they measure this stuff. But the superintendents are more stressed out than average adults. And the top reason for this high level of stress is political issues that are being writing an article about evidence. And there's a lot of raised in their districts, politics coming into schools, is what's stressing them out. And I think part of it's because just a lot of folks tell me they don't know what to do. And, you know, speaking out against it is tough, because they're not elected officials, they work for the elected officials. So then the board ends up being the respondent, or in some cases talk out there. I just saw an article the other day from a supporter of the political thing that's happening. And superintendents are trying to develop their voice, and they're trying to figure out, you know how to respond, but a lot of them just don't, because they're not sure how to proceed, which is why groups like campaign for our shared future have created a playbook for superintendents to help with political issues. It's philanthropic organization about the importance of evidence and why IEI is creating empowered spaces so we can talk about this stuff. And so we can, we can download with each other, we can help coach each other, our session here in Sonoma, we're focused on strategic planning. And then we believe that it's our duty, our role, our charge, to then go out and be the voice of advocacy on behalf of the soups, through all the stuff that we write with SWPR, through all the messages that we put out how a tech companies should be ensuring they have solid in the media and on social media, we can say things that a lot of superintendents are not able to say, because we're not beholden to any board, we're not counting on elected officials for our jobs. And we're also not representing any one individual so we can speak collectively. And it gives kind of a an arm's length a firewall between an individual superintendent and evidence, especially with ESSER funding dwindling. Yep. What are the things we're saying, but if we keep saying this stuff, we think that perhaps we might start to have influence and make an impact. your thoughts about that?

Doug Roberts: 6:14

I'm chuckling because honestly, I think that district leaders who want to do something are often quick to skip past the need to have scientific data to back up that the thing will work how much to philanthropists, how much money was spent by a certain pretty influential, fairly famous philanthropy shop, who we won't mention, it was the Gates Foundation, they've been very good about, like coming back from this and owning the mistake, they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars creating small schools in urban school districts. And they did that without any evidence that it would be impactful. And then at the end of it, it turns out, there was no evidence that it was impactful, because they were writing the check, they got to get away with not doing the evidence in advance because they were handing over millions of dollars to schools. So on the flip side, I've seen a lot of really amazing things happen in our rooms between superintendents, and founders of companies who are in the early stages, where the where the superintendent mitigates the risks of not having any sort of like large scale evidence that something's going to work. They use kind of the sniff test and common sense, right? If I do this thing, whether it's if kids spend more time on literacy, or if kids are being screened for mental health issues, or whatever it is that the founder is proposing to do with their ed tech solution, and the superintendent, yeah, well, if this passed muster with all of my team, I'm going to find a way to implement this without betting the farm without exposing kids to real actual harm or risk, we're going to implement it slowly, we're going to pilot it, we're going to try it here, we're going to try it there and try it in the school where I've got the principal and team that really will implement with fidelity, I guess we should just trust our district leaders to define what the evidence should or should not be. And for a lot of IDI members, they come here because they can find things that they never would have found otherwise. And they can find technology that never would get on to their desk. And that because it doesn't yet have the double blind study behind it. And it's just a founder who will jump through hoops to make sure that the implementation is effective. So my take on evidence in edtech, is that if you've been around, it's something that you invest in to try to prove that you're worth being at large scale. And then at that stage for the company, it probably makes sense, because you're gonna build your partnerships with districts starting with people who might be less entrepreneurial minded, right, who might be even more risk averse than the average educational leader. But if you're just getting it we should not be shutting out early stage companies, because they don't have whatever the establishment determines to be evidence, but rather, the evidence is really it's in the eye of the beholder. That's a decision between a superintendent and her/his cabinet, and the actual educators who will implement the thing, and must continue to have an environment where things without traditional evidence are able to be implemented and flourish. I mean, how about the COVID vaccine? Right? Like, there are people who were concerned that it hadn't been through all the trials and blah, blah, blah. But if the United States and other countries didn't implement the COVID vaccine, where might we have been?

Sarah Williamson: 9:20

Yeah, good example.

Katie Lash: 9:21

It's kind of that parallel of like people applying to jobs and they're like, you don't have enough experience? Well, how do I get the experience if you don't give me the job type of like, circular argument? They're a little bit

Doug Roberts: 9:31

I think you know, Katie, and your colleagues and I know you guys are pros. Like you come to this thing, because you know how to take something that you're not sure if it's going to have all the impacts that the founder or the VP of partnerships or whatever is telling you it's going to have but you're willing to try because it's something that you think's got to get done for kids. Like I think we should just trust district leaders to make those calls and I do grow tired of Clarion calls for we must have evidence to research base to show that something works. I've been in, you know, in my previous career as a sales leader and VP of sales. I've been in so many meetings. And I typically worked with startups in earlier stage companies, I've been in so many meetings where somebody would say, is this research based and was typically the person who was trying to not do the thing that I brought them. And then there was someone else who was saying, you know, we'll do our own research on this. And it just seems like a waste of time sometimes to be talking about that. It's not that you want to put things in front of kids that are not effective. But you know, not for nothing like doing one of these, this whole research base thing sometimes feels like it exists to give the researchers a job, right? And like, the truth is that a teacher knows, teacher walks in the classroom, can see if something's working, can then give assessments and see, wow, that supplemental resource I implemented seems to be helping the kids with math. So like, that's the research that I think we should really care about,

Katie Lash: 10:48

I think too I'm probably super guilty of this. But a lot of times when I'm meeting with people III, I'm often like saying, Okay, I appreciate what you just said that you do. Now, I have a different use case. Like let's talk about other use cases, or other ways that and so I think a lot of times, like to me, that's, I'm using it so differently, that that matters to I don't know.

Doug Roberts: 11:11

Yeah.

Katie Lash: 11:12

Doug, another article, another op ed, you have authored about the future of AI for K 12. So how do you think the edtech companies are getting it wrong when they focus on AI support for school districts?

Doug Roberts: 11:24

Well, let's not be so negative, however, they're getting it wrong. I think

Katie Lash: 11:27

Sarah made the question just so you know.

Doug Roberts: 11:29

I know where he's going with it. I think where everyone's going wrong is yeah, I'm going to use ASU GSV as the that's kind of the bellwether, the annual event where the new hotness comes out, right. And I think everybody's just people are pitching AI first, and not the outcome first, like, what is the thing we're gonna help schools do? And then we figure out how the AI can be implemented, right? AI can save tons of time, it can make things more efficient. It can help with research, it can help with scheduling it can. There's so many parts of both the operation of schools and teaching and learning where AI can be implemented. But you know, everybody's sort of coming out and saying, ai ai ai, I think turns superintendents off, because it shows that you're not, you know, sort of listening to what districts are working on boards of education, don't sit at board meeting saying, How are we going to get more AI? What they talk about is how are we going to keep the school safe, how we're going to keep the kids safe? What policies are we going to enact to make sure that we do that? How are we going to improve achievement outcomes. That's what school districts work on. And so there are a bunch of individual teachers out there doing tremendous things with AI. And that's cool, right? Like that should be celebrated. And we should try to figure out how to, you know, scale those efforts up. And I think the companies that do that will be effective. And I think companies that don't have aI involved in what they're doing need to figure out how to do so to improve their operations. But I think I'm gonna speak on behalf of all superintendents, I think we bristle when somebody's trying to, like pitch us the new buzzword jargon around AI, because it's not yet clear if this is just another bubble. Another trend like bubble sheet assessments, formative assessments were in the early 2000s, like reading and literacy reading. First stuff was during the Bush administration, like video was when Khan Academy came out. Like all these things were supposed to radically transform if you've listened to some of the sessions at South by or at ASU GSB and other investor type conferences, these are supposed to transform and change how we do playlists, right? Everyone wanted to do the Netflix of schools was somebody, something I heard people say, at a South by Southwest way too many times 10 years ago. And I was just like, this is like, we don't need a Netflix of school, we need a school of school. And like, figure out what Netflix is doing and how it can be applied to school. And that's the thing, I just I want all the AI people to look at how districts are running and figure out how to apply AI to it

Katie Lash: 13:58

At this very moment, because it's still a buzzword. It's probably equally as dangerous for a company to mention AI as it is as a selling point. Like depending on who you're talking to. That may land or maybe the opposite of landing,

Doug Roberts: 14:11

Correct

Sarah Williamson: 14:11

Yeah.

Doug Roberts: 14:12

Yeah. There's some fear out there. I mean, if you just go like your friends who are teachers on Facebook, right, they're commenting that one of my teacher friends did this recently, AI was a real problem this year, because of plagiarism. Right? That's the first most teachers are engaging with it that way kids are using it to claim writing that is not there. So one of our monthly newsletters, I wrote the whole piece of AI and then I can neither confirm nor deny that I was really pressed for time that month and couldn't like write out a whole thing myself. But I basically I wanted to write about AI and I was like, wait, I was gonna make the AI write about it. And then and then at the end I wrote like, so that was written by AI. Do you think that was legit or not? And just sort of left it there. Right? Like,

Sarah Williamson: 14:50

how was the response?

Doug Roberts: 14:52

I don't know. It's a newsletter doesn't like take a social media post. But people were like, Oh, that was cool. Yeah, when probably a couple. Thanks. Probably a couple of you were like, Well, Doug must have been busy that month, which is also kind of the point.

Sarah Williamson: 15:03

Yeah, that's great. So I'm curious. One of the programs that I'm so impressed with IEI is IEI Lead, and your superintendent leadership program.

Doug Roberts: 15:13

Thanks.

Sarah Williamson: 15:13

Can you talk more about how you have really committed to increasing the superintendent pipeline, and as you're doing that I and how you think others can help support?

Doug Roberts: 15:22

Yeah, we started talking with the RAND report and how the people are leaving, people are retiring early, people are talking about how they want to get out. There's some really tremendous district leaders in this group who have left in during their prime, they've decided to retire, they're first eligible year, this is a real problem. And again, like I've always got the anecdotal someone probably is working on some kind of study showing the data, and it will just confirm what we already know. Great people are leaving this profession. And I heard somebody say, Yeah, this is like a long retired former superintendent, something to the effect of the people coming into this job, have no idea what they're doing, the quality is low, and they were not trying to knock anybody down. They were just trying to say like, the average experience of a new superintendent is really just it's very light today, because we're the bench of people is getting thin. So we have committed ourselves to developing the next generation of district leaders. And we're really excited about the partnership with Howard University. And Dr. Shawn Josias, who's a former supe and adjunct professor at Howard. He's like the superintendent of our superintendent school. I lead is the first program of which we're aware, that has two kinds of channels, there's the aspiring superintendent program, which there are a lot of those hours is unique and different. But there are a lot of ways to do that. But we are now opening the aspiring district leader cohort. So the two cohorts will operate in parallel, sometimes doing stuff together, sometimes doing stuff separately. Tracy Davis leads the aspiring super cohort, Dr. Serena shivers, leads the aspiring district leader cohort. So this is for anybody, teacher, teacher's aide, Principal, assistant principal, anybody who is interested in a district office job, but you're not sure you're ready to look at superintendent or you're not sure you want to be a superintendent, maybe you're in special ed, you want to be a director of special ed someday, this program is for those aspiring district leaders. And we're putting it together because it's an area of the it's sort of like further down the pipeline for superintendents. But it's like, you have to develop your farm team. So you can have people who can step up to the big job. And I'm really excited that Shawn and Howard are all in on this. People who sign up for this can get credit, it's you know, you get credits towards your credential or toward your salary schedule in your district. It's not a ton of time, it's not a ton of homework. There is an action research piece that you have to write to get at the end to get the credits. It's an optional in person, the first weekend in November, kind of meet and greet. And then it's all zoom classes on Tuesdays from in November, December, January, February, that we finish up with the in person final workshop, we do a bunch of interview simulations, we do board meeting press conference simulations that are actually really fun, but tremendous learning. We also like dissect everybody's LinkedIn, help them kind of position themselves best to find the job that they want either Supe or district office, we bring a ton of some of the best, you know, current and former soups in the business are the coaches and mentors for this program, like everything with IEI are approaches around community and network and fellowship and supporting each other. So several of our Ivy League grads are now superintendents, and all are either in the process of or already are members here, which we're really excited about. And we finished up with that last in person workshop, we hand out the certificates of completion at IEI Spring Summit, which is in early March in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And at that summit, you get your certificate, you kind of graduate, and the whole IEI superintendent community like welcomes you, and puts their arms around you and gives you a big hug, and we help you then go off to find where you're gonna go in your career. It's a really cool moment in the year for us. The IEI lead experience is one of my favorite things that we do. And I'm really looking forward to growing and this is the area of biggest growth focus for us. We think AI lead is the way to solve a lot of the challenges that we're seeing in the leadership development pipeline. And so it's just a matter of kind of scaling it up. But we have the right people here working on it. And, you know, vendors, corporate partners who are listening to this, this is I think one of the best investments you can make in terms of building your brand is being part of the solution to the leadership development pipeline and starting to build those relationships with folks as they step into district leadership or as they step into superintendenting, not to mention the really great group of coaches and mentors, sitting superintendents who hang out with this group. So I think, you know, vendors out there looking for something different than our typical National Summit should check this out. It's a really, the partnership support it in the past have done really well. On December 8 here in midtown Manhattan is the third annual Supes Choice Gala. This is a special evening, when some of the nation's most innovative school superintendents and organizational leaders come together to celebrate the best solutions in our marketplace and celebrate the best leaders in K 12. Education. We started the Supes Choice Awards, because so many ad tech organizations spend hours and hours in their meeting rooms, whiteboarding solutions, wondering what school superintendents might think of the solution that they're building. Supes choice is the answer to that problem. It's a low cost opportunity to get your solution in front of sitting school superintendents from the IEI community who will not only judge the best in each category, but will provide each applicant feedback. Applications are due August 24. The application is not complicated. The price goes up on August 1. So please get your applications in at supeschoice.com s u p e s choice.com. And you've got a shot to win a Supes Choice Award here at the gala in Manhattan. This December 8.

Katie Lash: 23:02

Shout out by the way to miss Tammy Williams from Indiana. Yeah, she's like a super fan of the aspiring program.

Doug Roberts: 23:10

Yeah, she's gonna be doing a webinar with us with EdWeb later this month, July 26. Yeah,

Katie Lash: 23:16

Perfect. Perfect. Well, the very last question, something that I'm a big fan of probably actually helped the three of us bond over. I mean, I was already part of IEI. But the Supes Choice Award came to be, and it's exclusively judged by k 12. leaders tell us more about Supes choice. Yeah, sure. I mean, I can tell you my perspective. But what's your perspective?

Doug Roberts: 23:38

What is your perspective? Go ahead?

Katie Lash: 23:40

No, I think it's fantastic. Like it what was kind of fun is I was kind of there from the start, right? When you were very first getting it up and going and like a feedback loop about the rubrics. And I think that that's been really fun to be a part of. And truthfully, when that next year came around, they were looking for some more superintendents, people from my area signed up. And I said, for me, it's like speed dating, a lot of companies that I may not have, I don't necessarily want to set up a whole webinar, a whole Call to learn about them, like scheduled at a time. But I could kind of do that, on my own time, read through the stuff. So I don't know, if I was on at the company side of it, it was really efficient exposure. And again, for me, I didn't want to set up a call with 20 Different people an hour apiece and spend 20 hours. So like, I wanted to read through their materials and see if I wanted to call with them all of that to say then it was really fun to kind of narrow the pool through the steps. So anyway, that's my thoughts. Yeah.

Doug Roberts: 24:35

Thank you. So that's the idea, right? Like, it's a little bit more than it's a low price point. So it's more expensive than your email campaign, except it actually gets read, because the IEI Supes are going to take a look at your piece and your two minute video. And they're going to say this, they're going to really kind of check in on it for a bunch of minutes. And like really pay attention, and then give you some feedback to take away. It's the best deal in the industry. I'm not sure why every company in this interview doesn't apply to this, but there's nothing like it. And I came up with it. Because I was back to my career as a sales guy, I would go to, you know, there are a couple of industry events where awards were given out. And I would just sit there going, my boss is asking me to hit numbers in terms of partnerships with school districts. So the people I'm trying to sell to don't care about these awards, because they're not from educators. They're from other industry people. And that's great. And that has its purpose. But we need one that's from educational, not just educators, but from educational decision makers, in educational agencies. And so Sarah and I were talking and think, you know, we've somehow came up with the idea, we should give out awards. And I just mean, it was like, let's call them Supes Choice. And so now it's a thing. And the little kind of dirty secret is that I was always trying to find a way to come up with an excuse to have a big gala party like the end of the calendar year with tuxedos and stuff, because I think that's one Yeah. But I also wanted it as a celebration and a gathering for our community, both partners and members that we came up with the red carpet idea, which is hilarious and amazing. Tiffany and Tracy do such a good job of that. But it's trying to solve for this problem. So much of my work with IEI comes out of my work with startups and all the things that would frustrate me about how it was so hard just to get superintendents take a look at something that was new. And so supes choice is another vehicle and how it's or how expensive it is to come to a thing like IEI like you know, to write that kind of check. You've got to either know the ROI is coming or you have to have a bunch of money in the bank or you have to be established where you can build that into a marketing budget. But what if you just want a little taste of feedback and so for under 1000 bucks, you can get your solution in front of these incredible superintendents. I think it's the best deal in the industry. The applications are due at the end of August. The price is going up in a couple of weeks at the end of July. So supes choice S U P E S choice. I'm such a pitch guy today, S U P E S choice.com. supeschoice is where the application is pretty simple. I just, it's worth a couple hours to throw in an application. And the companies that have won have had significant because it's not like winning an award from the industry that districts don't care about is an award from superintendent so like the companies who've wanted have gone on have leveraged it for great gains Victor from scribble. He's a small company that has grown significantly, Colin seal the founder of thinklaw.

Katie Lash: 27:14

Oh, yeah, both of those are good.

Doug Roberts: 27:15

Yeah, yeah. Right. Allen and thinklaw like they've wanted two years in a row. Now they've grown a company that no one ever heard of before Robin, one the first year and now has like, gone on to build a bunch of district business. So it's a place but then yeah, we've also fed companies like classlink well established company to get recognized for their work and their innovation, despite being an established old school company. So you know, it's a, we do a lot to try to build media attention around it. And press and social media, we'd make a big deal out of it, we have a badge, you can put on all your stuff. And you know, we are live broadcast the thing for people who can't make it to New York, but then we also now we sell tickets, so people can just come and a lot of times, it's like just a fun people fly in from the country just to be at the party. And it's a really good time. We always have student performance groups from area high schools or middle schools from our members. I don't know. I love supes choice, we have soft confirmation that there will be a major national elected official in attendance this year. But I can't confirm that yet. But soft confirm. So people who there might get to hear from somebody who's fairly fairly influential in DC.

Katie Lash: 28:20

Yeah, you had a pretty big news media outlet or to their last year, Sarah, I remember.

Sarah Williamson: 28:26

Oh, yeah.

Katie Lash: 28:26

It's kind of cool.

Sarah Williamson: 28:27

We sure did. Yes, I did. And we're gonna have some more.

Katie Lash: 28:30

I'm getting the the listener some free advice. If they entered supes choice ready. You don't know what has to pay me for this advice

Doug Roberts: 28:37

Straight from a judge advice

Katie Lash: 28:38

straight from the judge. If I'm reading your application, and I don't know what you do. And like the first one minute of reading it, that's a problem. I can't tell you how many people I read back to I'm like, I don't know what you do. Like, we're here to serve children. Okay. Yeah. So is everyone. Tell us more? Free Advice? There you go.

Doug Roberts: 28:58

Great. And that's why we made the commercial. I hope everyone sees the little like, ads that we recorded. We had some of this member judges do these funny ads. And one of them was this problem, the pitch and the ad was like, you know, a bunch of jargon. And one of the I think it was Barbara Mullin interrupted, like, what is it that you guys actually do? So that's we because we're trying to make sure that people get that message. And we do the same thing. We coach the partners who come to the summits to like, your two minute drill, like you got to make sure they know what you do in the first sentence or two. So good. Thanks for the free advice. Way to go.

Sarah Williamson: 29:29

Good advice. Okay, Doug. I know, that was the last question. But I actually want to ask you one more. So I'm curious how you've really worked to build your thought leadership presence throughout the years. And if there's anything you would change in the industry in terms of how people publicly try to build their own exposure and awareness?

Doug Roberts: 29:50

Hmm, interesting question. I think at some point, somebody, I read something or someone told me that, because this thought would never occur to me, but people are more interested in people than they are in companies, right. And then when I met you, you started telling me that too, and that always that I honestly am still uncomfortable with it. Because then you go talk to somebody who wants to, you know, one of these, like, business accounting nerds, who wants to put a valuation on your business. And they'll tell you that if it's all about the founder, then it's not as valuable, right. But also, I just, you know, it's not in my nature to want to make things about me. But once I realized that, by putting my own thoughts out there, we could grow this organization and build more relationships. It just started to snowball. But you know, I'm also a person I walk around a lot of times with, like, big ideas and thoughts in my head, and it's just like, call it founder, ADHD, or call it, I don't know what there's never time to sit for two hours, I just have never been able to just sit in like, right, I think I'm just too extroverted. And I'm too, I've made so many things happen for our organization by talking to people and being at things and being on zooms, and that's like my best and highest use of of time. But actually, really, when I have the time, I really enjoy writing. But having you know, SWPR help us with this help us think through topics helping us think through how to say something, and then helping us with the writing has been a tremendous help. And it's allowed us too, so because we're writing a lot more because we're publishing, we're pumping out so much more content. Now more people are finding out about us. And people. I hear this from potential members too. You know, they know what we're about. They know our values, from the things that we write. And that has been really helpful in terms of our ability to grow the organization that the IEI grows through members joining. And so when someone meets us, like, Oh, you're IEI like I read this thing that you did, that's when I know it's working. And now like with Tiffany and Sarah being Sarah has been a vice president rather Tiffany being recently promoted, they've been getting some stuff out there. But I'm interested in seeing them grow their personal, you know, influencer spheres, Tiffany's built something really cool with the women in leadership event. So I'm excited for them to do that. But I also noted that superintendents who have more, the more impactful and influential superintendents in terms of delivering things for kids tend to be those who are out there speaking, writing, the ones who write books, and I think we're proving that there's sort of a playbook for like superintendents, go write a book, go give talks. And then that's what you do. When you decide you want to take a break. Or if you want to resign and take a few years in the private sector, or you want to retire, right. And like writing a book is hard and takes a long time. I don't know how people like move out Brown, or PJ Kaposi. Do it. I'm truly impressed by it. The longest thing I ever wrote was my senior thesis in college, and it just about killed me. But like these short bursts of writing that were able to kind of scale on behalf of IEI members. I think the members really love it. They love being able to because they're like me, I think they have the same thing. They're walking around running a school system with ideas running in their head, and it's when am I going to sit down and write this thing? Right? I have to spend time with my family and my spouse, partner, etc. I can't just sit around writing. And so the ability for a group like you guys to help us scale that up has been tremendous. And people really appreciate that benefit of membership here. Yeah. And I appreciate hearing all the different things that they're thinking about. You know, that's what's really cool for me is like, wow, that's cool. The piece that Rick Cobb and Gina Cinotti wrote, who by the way, like would never have run into each other for work for us, right? Like Gina is Jersey, as it gets. Rick is this Oklahoma dude. And they connect at our Conclave, and they write a piece about this job is hard. And here's why I'm staying right like that just needs to get out there. And at this point, this is part of our kind of big strategy around the Empowered spaces and advocacy. We just want to tell the positive stories about what's happening in school districts, because most of the media about school districts and negative you hear about schools make the news when a teacher does something bad to a kid, or when there's some kind of scandal or financial problem or buildings have to get closed. You know, no one's ever writing stories about how this district created a welcome center for new arrivals from other countries, this district managed to spread its ESSER dollars out and create long term sustainable intervention tutoring program. Right.

Sarah Williamson: 34:12

I actually think that's an opportunity for superintendents, and we're actually going to talk about that in the business conference in one of my sessions. Yeah, there is an opportunity for superintendents to be more proactive, yes, about securing positive media relationships, coverage for their districts, they have the opportunity to do that. You just have to channel it.

Doug Roberts: 34:27

And we're doing it. Yeah, like we're doing it for them. But that to me, getting back to where we started this whole conversation, yeah, the political stuff that's coming at us, the solution to the political stuff is not to get political and start countering all the points one by one, like, here's why your point about this, or that is dangerous to LGBTQ kids or whatever. Like, you don't need to convince those people that you're right. Or rather, that's not about right or wrong. You don't need to convince these people that like this is not in the best interest of kids. What you need to do is show folks like, Okay, I hear your concern, look at how awesome our school is, look at like all the data we've got about how the achievement gap is closed. Like since I've been here, the last three years, look at what we've done. We've cut spending on this, whatever the positive story is, every district has one. And that's the story that I think if more districts actively told him, they can work with people like you Apogee does a great job of helping districts with their PR, like you put these pieces together, you tell those stories, then, you know, the people who might be doing other political work big become something that they're doing that doesn't really have to impact whether we are you know, how we do teaching and learning in the district. That's my thesis, and I'm gonna spend a lot of time this year working on that.

Sarah Williamson: 35:35

That's great. All right. Well, Doug, we're gonna let you go. I know you have a busy day ahead and a busy week ahead. So where can our listeners learn about you? And IEI?

Doug Roberts: 35:45

Yeah, I'm at Dougroberts_IEI on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. What do you do there? You just go to just LinkedIn look up, Doug. Roberts, I think slash Doug Roberts IEI IEI's it at IEI_K12, Twitter, ieik12.com. Like come check out what we're doing. We have a free event for any educator on August 3 and fourth in Annapolis, where we're focused on equity work, like how we can be equity warriors supporting each other to fight for equity for kids. It's in Annapolis at a pretty nice spot. Any educator can come to this thing for free. You gotta pick up your own hotel if you want to stay over and all that but it's got tremendous speakers, Dr. Alex Moreno from Denver Public Schools. Dr. Mark Waddell is hosting us from Annapolis. Tracy Davis from Nevada is one of the facilitators Dr. Brown from Ithaca. Staff about Daris is coming back from Beaverton, Oregon. So this event is free for educators. So if you want to come and talk equity for two days, please come and then the other events are all listed on the website. And if you're interested in membership, there's a way to apply but you know Connect with us. We'd love to chat.

Sarah Williamson: 36:45

Awesome. Thank you, Doug.

Doug Roberts: 36:47

Thanks, guys.

Sarah Williamson: 36:49

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 SWP-group.com. Thanks for tuning in today and we will see you next time on Build Momentum.