Dr. Kelli Peterson
Lead Facilitator, Equitable Policies
Dr. Kelli Peterson is deeply invested in high-quality schools. She has served as a teacher and school administrator across various cities including Brooklyn, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Nashville. Dr. Peterson has served as a local system leader, as the Chief Portfolio Innovation and Accountability Officer for NOLA Public Schools and state system leader as the Assistant State Superintendent for the Louisiana Department of Education. As a local system leader, she had the responsibility of overseeing charter school accountability for 78 charter schools, building the capacity of 38 charter boards, development of new school strategy and the execution of the charter authorization process.
As the Assistant State Superintendent, Peterson led the Office of Equity, Inclusion and Opportunities, working to create a value and vision for equity within the educational landscape for New Orleans. A state system leader, she revised the state charter application to include intentional questions shifting to a community centered authorization approach, allocated $2M towards the development of New School Choice Pandemic Response Funds, developed an organizational structure to meet the needs of schools statewide in order to provide technical assistance and support to special education educators, allocated $1.2M of competitive funds to school systems to help support the cost of providing compensatory services to students with disabilities, and allocated $1M of the Governors Emergency Education Relief Funding to provide access to free mental health virtual visits for all public K-12 educators.
Dr. Kelli Peterson was born and raised in Flint, Michigan earned her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology from Spelman College, a Masters of Education in Educational Administration from University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and a Doctorate of Education in Curriculum Planning from Tennessee State University. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and The Links Inc. She serves as a Board member for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers(NACSA) , and the New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute (NORLI).
Dr. Peterson now fully invests her time as the Founder and Principal Consultant of The Ed.ucateD Approach, a national education consulting firm that partners with education systems and leaders, organizations that support education, and those that govern education, customizing each client experience. The Ed.ucateD Approach provides services in three distinct areas; strategy development, program design and facilitation and co-designing solutions to challenges.