As Education Design Lab’s Higher Ed ReDesigner, Don connects higher education institutions with entrepreneurial start-ups to design new education models for student success, lifelong learning and workforce readiness. Don reimagines and disrupts higher education by designing with students, higher education and industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and others. Don leads design challenges, design challenge cohorts, and delivers other Lab projects targeting new higher ed models. He is currently leading the Badging Challenge Design Cohort.
Don is a nationally recognized expert in postsecondary planning and college success. He acutely understands the student experience, as well as ways in which schools can develop innovative programs in order to foster student success, especially for those from historically underrepresented populations. He deeply believes in the combination of technology and interpersonal relationships as a means to improve student outcomes.
Prior to his work at the Lab, Don founded CollegeSnapps, a Washington, D.C. based education technology startup company. He also served as the Director of Education for the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), where he created educational opportunities for high school counselors and college admission professionals including Critical Components, NACAC’s first new conference in over 20 years.
Don brings his roots in psychology and school counseling and a history of transforming student perspectives and needs into action to the Lab’s design thinking-driven process. Don received his B.A. in Psychology from Boston College and his Master’s of Education in School Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, where he is also working on his Doctorate in Leadership in Urban Schools. He makes a point of maintaining his connection to students, through his teaching at Johns Hopkins University and Boston University and work directly with students and families.
