I believe the best strategists are the best teachers.
To truly understand K–12 purchasing, I lived across three distinct worlds.
My journey is the deliberate fusion of three distinct perspectives across the education ecosystem.
Early in my career, I built go-to-market strategies and led sales engineering teams that scaled enterprise technology companies. But I wanted to stay deeply connected to the end-user experience. To stay grounded, I took on a role teaching an "Introduction to Computers" course on Saturdays at a local community college. That experience taught me the true craft of instruction: the patience to deconstruct complex systems, the empathy to locate friction points, and the discipline required to guide learners forward.
My perspective fully crystallized when I stepped into public education governance as an active School Committee Chair and regional board member managing public policy, municipal budgets, and district oversight.
Living across these three worlds exposed a massive disconnect in our industry. On Fridays, I sat in corporate strategy sessions focused on quotas, messaging decks, and feature-driven marketing. On Saturdays, I stood in the classroom on the receiving end of those exact tools, seeing firsthand where software failed to solve real instructional problems. On weekday evenings, I sat at the governance table evaluating municipal budgets, public bids, and district policies—experiencing the extreme fiduciary scrutiny school boards apply to every vendor contract.
I began to see a huge gap between what commercial teams were pushing and how school districts actually evaluate, fund, and adopt technology. I realized that raditional, high-pressure sales pitches do not just fail in public education—they trigger immediate red flags for public-sector committees and school boards.
Why I founded Propel Skills.
I founded Propel Skills to bridge that gap. Propel is not a generic sales coaching firm. It is the practical synthesis of curriculum design, public-sector fiduciary discipline, and executive commercial strategy.
I help edtech organizations replace aggressive, transactional sales tactics with a consultative methodology rooted in institutional trust. Drawing from my 360-degree view, I equip your team to understand how superintendents, curriculum directors, and school boards actually evaluate risk and value.
When you teach your commercial team how to stop selling at educators and start helping them buy, you build an authentic sales process that satisfies public governance, aligns with district priorities, and drives sustainable, multi-year partnerships.
