Robin Shrode

Robin is a teacher at heart with a focus on helping organizations improve so that each educator and student experiences teaching and learning in the most effective and efficient system possible. How we learn and what we learn is changing exponentially in the 21st century. We have the exciting opportunity to apply what we know about how this generation of students learn inside and outside the classroom and how we should fundamentally think differently about lesson design.  As a much sought after coach, trainer, instructional design specialist and systems thinker, Robin supports and fosters a growth mindset in district and campus leadership, teachers and counselors from both an individual and systems perspective. On her journey to becoming an educational consultant Robin also carried the titles of classroom teacher, school counselor, and administrator of school improvement and professional development programs. She has been awarded both Teacher of the Year and Counselor of the Year in her former district in Irving, TX.

Being a part of the Texas Staff Development Council (currently Learning Forward TX) Board of Directors for three years (2004-­‐2007) was a great growth experience for Robin. She collaborated with other board members to shape the face of professional learning in her home state as well as co-­‐author the PLC Academy, a year long academy that district cohorts would participate in to gain knowledge and skills in collaborative instructional planning and data analysis.  Robin currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Hanna4Hope, Inc foundation whose mission is to bring awareness and prevention of teen suicide and serves as the foundation’s Education Committee chair. 

From 2001-­‐2004 Robin served as a USDOE Practitioner Advisor, a small group of practicing educators across the nation, to serve as advisors to Small Learning Communities grant recipients and has personally led and sustained educational reform at the secondary level.

In 2006, she co-­‐founded American Alliance for Innovative Schools, LLC with her business partner, David Holden, and later renamed the company "American Alliance for Innovative Systems, LLC" to broaden their work scope. In 2018, Robin retired from AAIS, and became the Executive Director of the John and Deborah Gillis Foundation, a non-profit privately endowed foundation that provides four-year post secondary educational scholarships to 10 low SES students annually ($30,000) as well as $100,000 annually in grants to schools. She lives with her husband, James, and two dogs in Rockwall, Texas and is the proud grandmother of five beautiful children.