Co-Director, PEDC

Karen has over 25 years of demonstrated experience leading, facilitating, and supporting change in education systems across the United States. Presently, she works with state departments of education, organizations, and government agencies, focusing on leadership, organization change and advancing equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging. She helps to assess and strengthen systems, structures, and processes through deep listening, collaboration, and relationship-building. She is skilled in facilitating transformational change through dialogic approaches, large meeting methodologies, collecting and analyzing data, developing relevant intervention strategies and actions.

With a master’s degree in Organization Development from American University’s AU-NTL program, she is skilled in working with complex systems to examine organizational culture, group behaviors and dynamics, and systems, structures, and processes. Additionally, as member of NTL Institute, Karen designs and facilitates experiential learning in laboratory settings designed to advance human systems development. She is a former board chair of NTL and is presently the chair of membership, leading her team through a critical examination of membership processes and practices with a focus on equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice.

Karen presently, works with RMC Research to provide technical assistance and capacity building services for the Region 4 Comprehensive Center to state departments of education in the Mid-Atlantic Region. She collaborates primarily with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to support PEDC in the advancement of culturally relevant, sustaining education educators, diversifying the educator workforce, and the development of an equity, inclusion, and belonging (EIB) roadmap focused on embedding EIB throughout the Pennsylvania education ecosystem.

Karen is known for her ability to develop trust and create collaborative and inclusive spaces to facilitate change across cultures, races, nationalities, languages, economic status, and other dimensions of diversity. As Audre Lorde said, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” Karen resides in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband. They have three daughters. She loves laughing, traveling, reading, watching movies, and spending time with family and friends. However, her most precious past-time is spending time with her grandchildren, Robert, 13, and Victoria Eliza, 23-weeks.

Contact via email at kparkerthompson@rmcres.com

Dr. Juliet Curci is one of three Co-Directors for the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium and serves as Assistant Dean of College Access and Persistence for Temple University College of Education and Human Development. As Assistant Dean, Juliet's efforts focus on expanding college access initiatives so that more young people complete college degrees and more people from diverse backgrounds prepare to be teachers. She supervises the Temple Upward Bound and Upward Bound Math & Science TRIO college access programs as well as the Temple Education Scholars dual enrollment program and initiatives in support of first-generation college students. Juliet earned a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and American Culture Studies from Washington University in St. Louis, a Master's degree in Elementary and Special Education from St. Joseph's University, and a Ph.D. in Urban Education from Temple University. Juliet was raised in New Orleans, LA and has lived in the Philadelphia area for the last eighteen years. She currently resides in Lafayette Hill, PA (Colonial School District) with her husband, Chris, and her two children, Ben (9) and Genevieve (6), where she is a founding board member and current treasurer of the Colonial Area Anti-Racism and Social Equity Alliance.

Contact via email at juliet.curci@temple.edu

Dr. Donna-Marie Cole-Malott is Assistant Professor of Professional and Secondary Education at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Cole-Malott also serves as Co-Director of the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC)—an organization dedicated to educator diversity, equity, and culturally relevant education and systems, serving the needs of BIPOC learners throughout the Commonwealth.

Dr. Cole-Malott’s research and work focus and intersects in three areas; the lived experiences and literate lives of Black girls and their social and academic identity development; race, equity, and the factors that support equal access for underrepresented students in schools; educator diversity, equity, and culturally relevant education for all educators. Her work centers on the ecosystem of public education and strategies for dismantling system racism that can improve outcomes for all students.

Contact via email at colemalott.phd@gmail.com or dcolemalot@esu.edu