Growing for Justice: A Developmental Continuum of Leadership Capacities and Practices

Eleanor―Ellie―Drago-Severson is Professor of Education Leadership and Adult Learning and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. A developmental psychologist, Ellie teaches, conducts research, and consults with team, school, district, and systems leaders―as well as teacher leaders―in public, charter, and private schools and systems. She supports professional and personal growth; leadership development for principals, assistant principals, teachers, schools, districts, and organizations; and coaching and mentoring in K–12 schools, universities, medical institutions, educational associations, and other adult education contexts both domestically and internationally. She is also an internationally certified developmental coach who partners with leaders to build internal capacity, lead on behalf of social justice, and strengthen capacity across their systems.

For more than three decades, Ellie’s teaching, research, and partnerships in the field have sought―synergistically―to explore and extend the possibilities of adult development and developmental leadership as levers for internal capacity building at the individual, team, organizational, and societal levels. Her work explores interconnected streams that focus on the connection between internal capacities and educational leaders’―broadly and inclusively defined―practice on behalf of growing bigger selves and helping others to do the same. She also takes a developmental approach to creating conditions that support our desires to thrive and support those in our care, as well as feedback for growth, the pressing challenges national and international educational leaders are facing and ways to help them manage these challenges, and leadership preparation and development. In addition, her work offers a new, learning-oriented model for leadership development; supports adult development in individuals and teams within and across systems; lifts leadership at the individual and systems levels; supports diverse adult English language learners and those who serve them; and grows teacher, principal, assistant principal and district-level leadership.

Consonant with urgent conversations about transforming teams, schools, systems, and society into more learning-inclusive and equity-oriented contexts, her work foregrounds how we can support leaders’ internal capacity building in schools, districts, organizations, and leadership preparation programs―and how these capacities inform the gifts leaders are able to give to those in their care, each other, and the world as they lead for social justice and strive to make the world a better place for all. Ellie loves opportunities to accompany educators and other leaders in their vital work―and never takes it for granted. Instead, she considers it a gift.

At Teachers College, Ellie is director of the PhD Program in Educational Leadership. She teaches aspiring and practicing principals in the Summer Principals Academy; aspiring superintendents in the Urban Education Leaders Program; and leaders from a range of for-profit, management, and consulting sectors in the Accelerated Education Guided Intensive Study (AEGIS) Program. She also coaches leaders in the Cahn Fellows Program for Distinguished Leaders and in her private coaching practice to help them grow―on the inside―and to grow their practice. In addition, she serves as faculty director and co-facilitator of the Leadership Institute for School Change at Teachers College.

Ellie is author of the best-selling books Helping Teachers Learn: Principal Leadership for Adult Growth and Development (Corwin, 2004) and Leading Adult Learning: Supporting Adult Development in Our Schools (Corwin/The National Staff Development Council, 2009), as well as Becoming Adult Learners: Principles and Practice for Effective Development (Teachers College Press, 2004) and Helping Educators Grow: Strategies and Practices for Leadership Development (Harvard Education Press, 2012). She is also coauthor of Learning for Leadership: Developmental Strategies for Building Capacity in Our Schools (Corwin, 2013), Reach the Highest Standard in Professional Learning: Learning Designs (Learning Forward & Corwin, 2014), Tell Me So I Can Hear You: A Developmental Approach to Feedback for Educators (Harvard Education Press, 2016), Leading Change Together: Developing Educator Capacity Within Schools and Systems (ASCD, 2018) and Growing for Justice: A Developmental Continuum of Leadership Capacities and Practices (Corwin/Sage & Learning Forward, 2023).

Ellie’s teaching, scholarship, and developmental approach to leadership foreground the power of growth, relationships, and interconnections―since these are essential to learning, development, individual perspective broadening, authentic collaboration, and capacity building at the individual, team, school, district, and systems levels. Her teaching, mentoring, and life’s work are inspired by her husband and soulmate, her parents and family, her relationships, her teachers, her own experiences as a middle and high school teacher, her experiences as a program director and teacher of adults, her work with leaders in the field, her coaching work, and―last but not least―her work with practicing and aspiring leaders in graduate programs and in the field. Taken together, these experiences form an interdisciplinary palette that is complemented by adult developmental theories and other life-changing frameworks.

Ellie’s work has earned awards from the Spencer Foundation, the Klingenstein Foundation, and Harvard University, where she served on faculty for eight years and was awarded the Morningstar Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Dean’s Award for Excellent in Teaching. Most recently, Ellie received three outstanding teaching awards from Columbia University. She earned degrees from Long Island University (BA) and Harvard University (EdM, EdD, and a postdoctoral fellowship). Ellie grew up in the Bronx and is deeply grateful for the ways that it―and the community that raised her―have shaped her life.  

Jessica Blum-DeStefano is an instructor and advisor at Bank Street College of Education, where she teaches adult development and qualitative research methods. Her teaching, scholarship, and approach to leadership foreground the power of growth and interconnection―especially as they relate to individual perspective transformation, authentic collaboration, and capacity building systemwide. Toward these ends, her work is inspired by an interdisciplinary tapestry of ideas―including adult developmental theories, social justice frameworks, the history and philosophy of education, organizational studies, student voice, and qualitative/mixed-methods research―as well as the nine rewarding years she spent as a teacher and school administrator in K-12 alternative education settings. Jessica earned her PhD in Education Leadership from Teachers College, Columbia University, and  holds additional degrees from Emory University (BA), Hofstra University (MA), and Teachers College (M.Phil.) Jessica is a coauthor of Learning for Leadership: Developmental Strategies for Building Capacity in Our Schools (Corwin, 2013), Tell Me So I Can Hear You: A Developmental Approach to Feedback for Educators (Harvard Education Press, 2016), and Leading Change Together: Developing Educator Capacity Within Schools and Systems (ASCD, 2018).

Deborah Brooks Lawrence, EdD is a native New Yorker, who believes that equitable access to viable resources will pave the road for universal recognition and sustainability of Human Rights; and as educators we without question need to prepare all of our practitioners and students to embrace the possibilities of equitable opportunity. This is couched in her witness to, and participation in, the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements as well as her first-hand witness to Apartheid and Nyerere’s Pan Africanism.  It is through this inclusive lens that she weaves theory, research, advocacy and practice in her current role as a City Research Scientist with the City of New York.  Alongside her current role, Deborah was a Teaching Fellow in Educational Leadership and Development for the Summer Principal′s Academy (SPA) at Columbia University, she co-taught a Dissertation Research course, at Teacher’s College Columbia University, and designed and teaches a  course on the historical and philosophical foundations of education at Bank Street College of Education. Prior to this work, Deborah taught  Logic and Rhetoric for Antioch College’s NY Extension, taught in a charter elementary school and was the founding director of the only supplemental educational program to mandate parents’ attendance to learn and discover alongside their children. Deborah’s scope of work includes work as the interim Director with ReServe (Organization for retired individuals), Education Director of in-school, out of school, and after-school programs throughout NYC for a large non-profit, work on tolerance with the United Nations Association of the United States of America (UNA-USA), and pivotal work with immigrant populations, disenfranchised adults, marginalized children and families, education and child welfare practitioners. She is the co-author of Inherited Wisdom: Drawing on the Lessons of Formerly Enslaved Ancestors to Lift up Black Youth (Cognella, 2022).