ACTE Postsecondary CTE Summit 2026

I am the founder and CEO of Career Bridge, a work-based learning platform designed to make meaningful, career-connected experiences easier to create, manage, measure, and scale. My journey began as a high school CTE marketing teacher, where I developed the Student-Led Agency model to connect students with real businesses, solve authentic challenges, and build evidence of professional experience.

I later served as a marketing lecturer in the Robert C. Vackar College of Business & Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where I further refined and scaled the model for postsecondary education. Working across courses, faculty, students, and industry partners helped demonstrate how employer-connected learning can be embedded directly into the curriculum while producing measurable student, institutional, and community outcomes.

I also served as a Postsecondary State CTE Leaders Fellow through Advance CTE and the ECMC Foundation, where my work focused on expanding access to high-quality work-based learning and strengthening connections between education, workforce development, and industry. My work has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, Ford Next Generation Learning, and the White House.

Today, I work with educators, colleges, employers, workforce organizations, and economic development partners to build scalable systems that connect classrooms, communities, and careers.

Talk to me about work-based and experiential learning, employer engagement, Student-Led Agency models, scaling high-quality CTE experiences, measuring student skill development, and using technology to reduce the administrative burden of coordinating these programs. I am especially interested in connecting with people working to ensure every student graduates with meaningful experience, professional relationships, and evidence of what they can do.