Nancy Akhavan

Dr. Nancy Akhavan has spent 30 years as an educator and consultant. Her work focuses on student support through good first literacy instruction, and intervention, English language development, leadership development and organizational systems to increase student achievement. For the past fifteen years she has conducted professional development, given keynotes and provided seminars for thousands of educators nationally and internationally. She has served as a consultant for numerous districts and coached school district leaders, principals and teachers related to serving the most challenged situations and historically underserved youth in our educational systems.

She provides support to school districts on a variety of related topics to foster institutional change that ensures equity and access to educational opportunities for all students. She believes that literacy achievement is an equity issue, as all students deserve to read, write, and think well in a variety of content areas and in a variety of genres. Currently, she works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership where she teaches courses in Educational Leadership and Educational Reform to doctoral students and Master’s degree students. Dr. Akhavan has been a bilingual teacher, principal of three schools all identified as Title One schools, and a district administrator of a large urban district for ELA, Math, Social Studies, Science and World Languages. Dr. Akhavan also is the administrator of a multi-million dollar grant focused on implementing school models at elementary, middle and high schools to increase student achievement and decrease the disproportionality of students of color being suspended and expelled.

She served as Assistant Superintendent Secondary Division in Fresno Unified School District with supervising 15 middle schools, and providing systems support to schools K-12, and professional development to leaders and teachers for the district which has over 73,000 students. Dr. Akhavan has experience in urban and rural districts. Additionally, she has worked as a facilitator and coach of district level leaders through the John D. Welty Center for Educational Policy and Leadership, formerly CVELI. Dr. Akhavan is recognized for her expertise in teaching literacy practices and has published ten books that focus on instruction that increases student achievement through focused teacher professional support and development.