Welcome to Jumpstart PD

Elevating the professional development community, together

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About Us

We’re creating a community for equity-minded educators to equip their ability to provide impactful PD, so that we can achieve equitable outcomes for all students.

Teaching is hard work.

Especially today.

Professional development helps refuel and reignite educators, so that they empower students and meet educational outcomes more effectively.

But it can be challenging for school leaders and teachers to find high-quality PD and teaching tools that are cost-effective and meet growing needs.

At the same time, PD providers and educational consultants need to fine-tune their own skills and strategies and stay on top of best practices for delivering professional learning, in-person and online.

There’s been little opportunity for shared learning in the PD community, and little effort to improve access to these experts and resources.

Until now.

Why You Should Join Us

If at least one of the hats you wear includes planning, designing, or delivering PD for teachers, administrators, or staff then Jumpstart PD Network is designed to support you.

For Teachers and School Leaders, Jumpstart PD is a platform to access high-quality PD on equity and inclusion inside and outside the classroom. Resources are curated for you, with guidance for how and when to apply tools in your district or classroom.

For Consultants and PD Providers, Jumpstart PD is a membership community to access strategies, ideas, and support for designing and delivering effective professional learning. It’s also a place to showcase your PD opportunities to the educators who need your expertise.

Our Founding Team brings decades of experience leading equity and inclusion PD along with cutting-edge expertise in delivering high quality PD from a distance and in person. 

With heightened awareness, the world needs educators equipped to lead the exhausting work of striving for more equitable outcomes for all students. And, we need each other! Let's elevate the PD community, together.

Membership is free. Participation is priceless. 

The Founding Story 

In February 2020, Co-founder Nicole proudly published a book on designing dynamic and engaging in-person PD. A month later, in-person gatherings screeched to a halt. The education sector, along with the rest of the world, grappled with how to navigate and maintain community and connection.

Nicole had already begun exploring this challenge, because two months prior she was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a highly sought presenter who traveled across North America, she feared losing the ability to engage with innovative educators passionate about this work. Anticipating that cancer treatments would throw a major wrench in her networking plans, she started looking for an engaging online community focused on designing equity-minded PD. She couldn’t find it, so we built it.

While the origin story is personal, our mission is global. The mission of the Jumpstart PD Network is to equip education leaders with skills to see inequities and challenge them, to guide teachers to teach empathy and not entitlement, and to empower students as agents in their learning environment.

Our team has worked with hundreds of districts and thousands of schools focused on the same challenge: how do we develop our staff and ourselves so that we can reach all of our students? And our partner schools want to know – what are other schools doing? What’s working?

Jumpstart PD is a place to answer those questions, explore common challenges, and share lessons learned TOGETHER. Nicole’s diagnosis gave us a jumpstart (hence the network name) on building the online space, but the people make the community. Let’s work together to provide impactful, equity-minded PD so that we not only professionally develop our staffs and ourselves, but that we ultimately make the world a less biased and more empathetic, less oppressive and more equitable place to live.