Sadé is a School Leadership & Innovation Partner with Big Picture Learning. She infuses her passion for sustainability and student agency in education into her collaborations with school leaders and communities facilitating innovation and growth in their work and interest based learning programs.

Community and education are Sadé’s bread and butter. She began her career as a 7th grade science teacher at Launch Expeditionary Learning School in Crown Heights. Though she loved working with the Launch and greater Crown Heights community, Sadé’s yearning for home led her to head back to her roots and immerse herself full-time into community-based work in her native borough of Staten Island. There she continued to work with youth as well as teachers and school leaders, providing coaching, professional developments, and workshops around SEL, violence prevention/intervention, postsecondary readiness, and more. She also spent a few semesters as an Adjunct Lecturer in the English Department of Wagner College during this time. In her most recent role with PowerTools, an NYC-based education consulting firm, Sadé took on a combination of operational, facilitation, and consulting roles, working with schools and programs around the city to support their advisory programs, SEL initiatives, culture and climate, restorative practices, and more. A highlight from her time with PowerTools is her former role as a Career Readiness Director (via the Brooklyn- and Bronx-based Civilian Climate Corps workforce development program), where she had the opportunity to train program members of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life in career readiness skills, community-building practices, self-advocacy, and more.

Sadé deeply values community, honor, and balance. She utilizes these values to navigate her work, relationships, and engagements with accountability and integrity. Her passion for strengthening students’ skills around self-advocacy and agency (no matter their age, background, history, etc.) is what led her to Big Picture Learning and it continues to be a North Star for Sadé’s work as a School Leadership & Innovation Partner here at BPL.

Sadé received her Bachelor’s Degree in African & African American Studies and Visual & Media Studies from Duke University. She received her Master’s Degree in Teaching from Relay Graduate School of Education. Her hobbies include yoga, qi gong, soccer, cooking, and baking. She is a self-proclaimed “hip hop head” and cinephile and will happily nerd out on either of those topics if the situation calls for it.