Public Impact

Public Impact's Team
Bryan C. Hassel Dana Brinson Julie Kowal Jacob Rosch Elizabeth Valsing	Emily Ayscue Hassel Sarah Crittenden Lauren Morando Rhim Lucy Steiner
BRYAN C. HASSEL is Co-Director of Public Impact. He consults nationally on charter schools and the reform of existing public schools. In the charter school arena, he is a recognized expert on state charter school policies, accountability and oversight systems, and facilities financing. Other areas of education reform in which he has worked extensively include school district restructuring, comprehensive school reform, and teaching quality. President Bush appointed him to serve on the national Commission on Excellence in Special Education, which produced its report in July 2002. In addition to numerous articles, monographs, and how-to guides for practitioners, he is the co-author of Picky Parent Guide: Choose Your Child's School with Confidence and author of The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise and co-editor of Learning from School Choice, published by the Brookings Institution Press in 1999 and 1998. Dr. Hassel received his doctorate in public policy from Harvard University and his masters in politics from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
EMILY AYSCUE HASSEL is Co-Director of Public Impact. Ms. Hassel previously worked as a consultant and manager for the Hay Group, an international human resources consulting firm. At Hay, she worked with a variety of industries in the public and private sectors, where she helped clients manage people more effectively to achieve desired organization results. She is currently leading several national projects designed to build the capacity of states and districts to respond to chronically low-performing schools and to build teacher and leader capabilities. Her other work in education includes: authoring the North Central Regional Education Laboratory’s Professional Development: Learning from the Best, a toolkit on designing and implementing high-quality professional development based on the experiences of model professional development award winners; co-authoring Picky Parent Guide: Choose Your Child's School with Confidence; creating NCREL’s comprehensive website on professional development; and authoring people-management training tools for a public school leadership institute organized by SERVE, the Southeastern regional educational lab. Ms. Hassel received her law and Masters in Business Administration degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
DANA BRINSON is a consultant with Public Impact. Ms. Brinson brings a wealth of experience in classroom education and organizational analysis to Public Impact. She has taught in a variety of settings as a high school special educator, a substitute teacher, and a university teaching assistant. She was a special educator at a public school serving Boston-area teens with behavioral and emotional disorders and learning disabilities. Ms. Brinson led the development of Public Impact’s 2007 report to the North Carolina Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools to guide recommendations on the state’s charter school program. In addition, she has conducted research in the areas of: charter school replication, philanthropy in education, school turnarounds, turnaround leadership training and selection, and special education in charter schools. Dana is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of West Virginia University with degrees in psychology—with a focus on child development—and history. She holds a masters degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
SARAH CRITTENDEN is an analyst at Public Impact. Since joining Public Impact, she has worked on numerous data analysis and policy analysis projects related to school accountability, school restructuring, school finance, and performance measurement and reporting. She previously interned with N.C. Prevention Partners and was a research assistant in psychology. Ms. Crittenden earned her B.A. in Psychology with Highest Honors and B.A. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
JULIE KOWAL is a consultant with Public Impact. She has conducted extensive education policy and management research, including studies of private and charter school teacher compensation and state and district pay policies to attract teachers to hard-to-staff positions. Julie has also worked extensively in the area of school restructuring under No Child Left Behind, most recently in co-authoring detailed profiles of four restructured schools in Michigan and California and co-authoring white papers on NCLB’s chartering, contracting, and turnaround restructuring options. Julie earned her law degree with honors from the University of North Carolina. While in law school, she worked with the UNC Center for Civil Rights, UNC School of Government, and the NC Justice and Community Development Center. She is a proud resident of Pittsboro, NC.
LAUREN MORANDO RHIM is a senior consultant with Public Impact. Ms. Rhim previously held a research appointment at the University of Maryland, College Park in the College of Education where she directed a national research study on charter schools and specifically, issues pertaining to students with disabilities in charter schools. She also worked closely with the National Association of State Directors of Special Education on multiple research and technical assistance projects designed to assist state, district, and school policy leaders develop capacity to deliver special education and related services in charter schools. In her other education work, she recently completed a comprehensive evaluation of charter schools in Maryland for the Maryland State Department of Education. She has consulted with multiple national organizations on school reform issues and most recently completed a series of case studies examining state-initiated school takeovers for the Education Commission of the States. Ms. Rhim received her doctorate in Education Policy from the University of Maryland, College Park and her master's in education from The George Washington University.
JACOB ROSCH is an analyst with Public Impact. As an undergraduate, Jacob pursued extensive qualitative and quantitative research and studied abroad in Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Switzerland. An accomplished saxophonist, Jacob is the founder of a jazz trio and currently plays with a number of ensembles in and around the Triangle area of North Carolina. He earned a B.A. with honors in sociology and music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
LUCY STEINER is a senior consultant with Public Impact. Ms. Steiner’s recent work includes co-authoring a paper on state takeovers, one of the restructuring options under No Child Left Behind, for the Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement. She also recently co-authored an evaluation of the federal Dissemination Grant Program for the Charter Schools Program at the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE). She is currently working on the newest USDOE Office of Innovation and Improvement publication, a guide to charter school authorizing, which should come out in the spring of 2007. Other recent work includes a paper on stimulating the supply of new choices for families for the Education Commission of the States and co-authoring a paper for the Smith Richardson Foundation on a similar topic, Starting Fresh: A New Strategy for Responding to Chronically Low Performing Schools. She has also worked in the area of teacher professional development, most recently in writing a revised version of the Guide to Working with External Providers for NCREL which offers advice to districts on forming an effective partnership with a professional development or technical provider. She has conducted extensive research on effective staff development and has written a research synthesis for NCREL entitled Designing Effective Professional Development Experiences: What Do We Know? Previously, she conducted research for NCREL’s toolkit Professional Development: Learning from the Best. In addition, she has been a co-leader in two workshop series designed to help principals from low-performing schools across North Carolina improve student achievement. A former high school English teacher, Ms. Steiner holds a Masters in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University.
ELIZABETH VALSING is business manager for Public Impact. Previous to working for Public Impact she served for 18 years as a professional stage manager, most recently with the Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, NC. Her stage management credits include Broadway, Off-Broadway, domestic and international touring. Some of her credits include the Tony Award winning production Fool Moon, the New York City Ballet, and the Trisha Brown Company. In addition she worked for five years as personal assistant to the writer, director and actor Bill Irwin. Ms. Valsing lives in Carrboro, NC.