Nancy is a veteran classroom teacher and education leader whose decades-long career bridges executive leadership, policy, and classroom innovation. Nancy was former President and CEO of the Illinois Council on Economic Education, overseeing a statewide network in partnership with six university centers of economic education, reaching nearly 200,000 students each year. A pivotal contributor to education policy, Nancy served on the Illinois State Board of Education task force that revised the state’s economics standards and helped integrate financial literacy into statewide standards for the first time.
Nancy’s work is marked by measurable outcomes, including co-directing the dual-state Reading and Entrepreneurship Program (REP), which delivered a 15% gain in third-grade reading proficiency. She designed and led instruction for the Chicago Summer Business Institute and trained educators nationally for Mini-Society—an entrepreneurship education program endorsed by the U.S. Department of Education and sponsored by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.
Nancy’s honors include the Terry Savage Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to advancing economic and financial literacy and the Illinois Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Teaching of Economics. Nancy holds a BS in Education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MA in Economics for Educators from the University of Delaware. With Nancy now residing in Arizona, we are pleased to benefit from her expertise.