My Boys & Me
As a child, Leslie found poverty intolerable and decided she would spend her life eradicating it. In college, she realized the role a solid education played in supporting her to transform poverty while becoming aware of the uneven access many American children had to a quality education: At the age of twenty-one, Leslie devoted herself to creating powerful and transformative schools for communities most in need.
For 30+ years, Leslie has worked at the intersection of leading, learning, and equity. She began her career teaching middle and high school General Education and Newcomer students in the Bay Area. Her work with students emphasized providing a relationship and language-rich interactive learning environment grounded in relational trust and cultural competency.
As a teacher, Leslie quickly realized how the school’s organizational and leadership fabric impacted the classroom and ultimately student outcomes. Combining this awareness with her long held fascination and study of understanding the motivations and performance of individuals and teams, Leslie integrated the social, behavioral, and organizational sciences into her practice as a teacher, educational leader, school founder, and executive and organizational coach.
Leslie developed a reputation for creating strong foundations for new schools as well as turning around underperforming schools without the authority to hire or fire. In fact, one high school she coached was the most improved California Urban High School for three consecutive years. Her accomplishments in the field of education are prominently featured in the best-selling book, The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation by Elena Aguilar. Notably, Leslie is also a Truman Scholar.
Her work emphasizes building high performing leaders, teams, and organizations that make the world a better place. She has worked across the field of education (Schools, Central Offices, County Offices, CBOs) with a variety of clients (Teachers, Principals, Heads, Boards, Executive Officers, Executive Directors, and Superintendents). Her work has repeatedly demonstrated that results improve when relationships improve. By focusing on skills, behaviors, mindsets, and socio-emotional literacy, Leslie hones her clients’ equity, relational, and strategic lenses, which she attributes to transforming work cultures into centers of belonging that promote a thriving and productive work environment. In addition to working one on one with clients, Leslie also facilitates workshops and institutes for leaders and teachers across the Bay Area.
Reflecting on her success in designing and transforming underperforming schools, Leslie realized something more was needed to accomplish her goal of eradicating poverty: prosperity consciousness. Leslie turned her intellectual curiosity towards financial literacy and wisdom, and after uncovering and releasing her own limiting beliefs, founded a real estate investment and development company. Additionally, Leslie has applied her executive and organizational acumen across the fields of start-ups, green energy, regenerative farming, natural medicine, First Nation governments, and other private sectors.
Leslie’s unique and diversified executive and organizational performance experience across multiple sectors has highlighted some essential truths: People flourish and perform when the organizational fabric is organized around principles of care, strategy, clear processes, communication rhythms, integrated systems, teamwork, goal-oriented inquiry, autonomy, and warm accountability. Leslie’s area of expertise includes school design and development, teaching, business development, strategic planning, inquiry & data analysis, meeting design and facilitation, workshop facilitation, consensus building, conflict mediation, accountability conversations, diversity, equity, & inclusion, SOP development, SEC compliant fundraising, asset management, as well as real estate acquisition, entitlements, and market analysis.
Leslie cares deeply about impacting regeneration, healing, and both prosperity and unity Consciousness on Earth. She always anticipated that one day she would combine her educational, business, and real estate experience to open a school capable of addressing the urgent needs of Earth. That day has now come. She lives on the West Coast with her family.
