Executive Director

Cindy Kratzer has over 35 years of teaching, coaching, and professional development experience.  An inner-city elementary and middle-school teacher for 9 years, Cindy has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with an emphasis in curriculum, and over 25 years of experience in 1-on-1 coaching and large- and small-group professional development sessions.  Cindy's professional development expertise includes: literacy, instructional coaching, teacher and administrator evaluation, research-based instructional strategies, school culture, and conducting action research to evaluate district programs.  For over 20 years, Cindy has worked as a professor of qualitative research methods at UCLA. 

Sierra Educational Consulting      

After years of working together in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, Cindy and a colleague founded Sierra Educational Consulting in 2006 as a mechanism for sharing professional development structures such as Lesson Link™ and Student Onramp Strategies(SOS)™ in other school districts.  Cindy has consulted in school districts from Maryland to Northern California, and presented research at conferences hosted by the National Staff Development Council (NSDC), the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Cotsen Foundation's The Art of Teaching.  Cindy feels fortunate that her consulting work allows her to meet dedicated and talented educators from across the country, while concentrating on schools and districts in Southern California.