Lenisha Broadway Roberts, Senior Director of Leadership Development serves as the Build Lead Fellowship Coach. In this role Lenisha supports Build fellows by not only supporting them in their charter application writing but also provides training modules and direct coaching for fellows throughout their fellowship experience that ties directly with their leadership and development as CEOs. Lenisha also serves as a FOS (Follow On Support) coach within BES where she works with fellows who have completed the fellowship and have been approved by their charter authorizer to open their respective charter school through year zero- year two.
Lenisha is a pivotal intellectual voice in the PreK-12 arena offering expertise to aspiring school administrators in public district and public charter schools, as well as in her role at the University of Texas Arlington in Arlington, Texas where aspiring school leaders are under her tutelage in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. In her 25 years in education, she has served in many capacities in the educational sector. Her wide range of experiences have equipped her to not only lead schools but also lead charter districts to success.
Prior to this role, she served as the Director of Family and Scholar Engagement of Uplift Education, a Public Charter Schools system in Dallas, Texas, where she led a team of twenty-six educators who focused on improving and increasing collaboration and engagement of families and serve as the driver of increased retention and enrollment for a system of 20,000 plus scholars.
In her role as the Executive Director and Superintendent of the Arkansas Regional of Lighthouse Charter Schools, a nationally recognized public charter, she successfully sat on and supported three school boards and five school campuses in Jacksonville, Arkansas, North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She led the instructional vision and ensured daily operational excellence through effective coaching of school leaderships teams, erected structures to ensure compliance with state and local policies and laws, managed multi-million-dollar budgets, and cultivated strong, productive partnerships with local and state legislators, while leading successful charter startups and renewals for all campuses.
Prior to her role as a school district leader, Lenisha served as a special education teacher before answering the call to school leadership where she served with excellence as an Assistant Principal and Middle School Principal for a decade. The practices she implemented during her tenure as a successful school leader as measured by student academic achievement and performance, and continuous improved teacher practice remains an integral part of her repertoire as she coaches and supports school and district leaders today.
Lenisha matriculated in academic programs at the University of Central Arkansas in the city of Conway where she earned her Master of Science degree in Special Education and Bachelor of Science degree in Teacher Education.
She believes deeply in the promise of choice in public education being the most important opportunity gap closer for youth, particularly with a focus on effective community engagement, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse populations; and reminds everyone that she is excited about the opportunity to bring her experiences as an educational leader who cares deeply about instructional excellence, and college, and career opportunities for students.
