"Nada is an excellent researcher and writer, and a skilled presenter. She maintains a sense of humor and perspective and is comfortable with the ambiguity that comes from working in an ever-evolving world. She is one of the most ethical and responsible individuals I have worked with. You don’t have the privilege of working with people like Nada Djordjevich often. I can’t recommend her more highly."
Paul Gibson, President, Gibson & Associates
Overview
Nada Djordjevich has more than fifteen years’ experience working to strengthen schools, communities, nonprofits, and arts organizations. The founder and CEO of West Coast Strategic Consulting Services LLC, previously she was the executive director of Gibson and Associates. She has supervised and managed teams of consultants supporting city agencies, school districts, institutes of higher education, and non-profits. As a consultant, Nada Djordjevich secured more than $35 million in private, state, and federal funding for arts education, college-career readiness, early childhood programs, literacy supports, and access initiatives. Prior to consulting, she worked as an eductoar, teaching history and serving as the summer academic dean in the Center for Talented Youth Program. She taught in public and private high schools, and part-time as an instructor at a community college and coaching writing workshops.
Evaluation and Nonprofit Support
Nada Djordjevich is experienced in qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods. She evaluated several high-profile projects and programs including three National Science Foundation grants, six Math and Science Partnership grants, two Smaller Learning Community high school grants, and one early childhood education program. She was selected to lead a multi-year external evaluation team for a $29 million Race to the Top District grant for the New Haven Unified School District in California. For this project, she developed research instruments including focus groups, interview protocols and survey questionnaires as well as tools to support quality review of student outcome data and classroom instruction.
Strategic Planning
Nada Djordjevich has facilitated the development of several strategic plans. She has developed logic models for programs, evaluations, and grant and designed the process for inclusive engagement. She led the outreach process that supported the inclusion of 400 individuals and 24 agencies in the development of a local plan to address climate change in the Unincorporated Areas of Alameda County. She created a best practice guide for municipal funding for community agencies. The guide included methods for soliciting requests for proposals, evaluating programs, and support for collective impact programs to address systemic issues. Approved by the California Department of Education as a District Assistance Intervention Team Provider, Nada Djordjevich developed local education agency plans with five school districts, including two of the ten largest school districts in California. She has experience facilitating meetings and leading inclusive processes with multiple stakeholders. She has presented at numerous school board meetings, providing data analysis and outlining the progress of schools and district initiatives.
Consulting Project Results
Grant Resource & Partnership Development
$6 million awarded to the San Francisco Unified School District for science and math grants
$5 million for Elk Grove School District for mathematics grant from private foundation
$5 million for Smaller Learning Communities Grant for Modesto City Schools.
$5 million for K-12 STEM education in 3 Marin County school districts.
$1.7 million for STEM grant for East Bay School District
$1.5 million in grants awarded for highly competitive 21st Century after school program grant
$5 million awarded for high school college-career grant and mathematics grant for Antioch Unified
$5 million awarded for literacy grant for San Francisco Unified School District
$1 million awarded for Oakland Unified partnership grant
$500K to support arts education and STEAM learning in public schools in Marin County
$500k to support teacher recruitment in San Francisco County
$300k to support social emotional education and mental and physical health practices in Southern Alameda County
$250k to support visual and performing arts education in Southern Alameda County
$200k to advance dual language immersion education in San Francisco public schools
Strategic Planning & Engagement
Facilitated Art and Science Convening including Fine Arts Museums and San Francisco Schools resulting in the development of a logic model for PreK-12 science, literacy, art integration program.
Conducted community outreach process to engage 400 individuals and 24 agencies for a local plan to address climate change in the Unincorporated Areas of Alameda County.
Crafted successful charter renewal strategic plan and resource development for a nonprofit community dual language and arts immersive charter school.
Worked with 40+ schools to develop plans for improvement. Plans resulted in outstanding achievement with most schools exiting the state program based on exemplar results, including several schools receiving Title I awards for improved students outcomes in reading and math and lowered achievement gap.
Evaluation & Research
Led evaluation of $29 million Race to the Top District grant in California. Program met annual monitoring goals and received annual and no-cost extension funding.
Authored review of municipal funding programs to provide guidance for city governments.
Conducted 3 National Science Foundation grant evaluations, including STEM teacher recruitment and preparation, high school mathematics preparation, and an innovative career partner program with the UC Berkeley and a Bay Area biotech firm.
Evaluated middle school expanded day programs and online professional learning modules for educators for the California Academy of Sciences.
Conduct annual external evaluations of expanded day program for Super Stars Literacy and Girls Inc of Alameda County.
Identified by the US Department of Education for outstanding quality and significant results in evaluation.
Clients
Nada Djordjevich has worked with dozens of school districts, several universities, civic agencies, and nonprofits. A sample list is below.
County of Alameda
Cal State University East Bay
California Academy of Sciences
Girls Inc. of Alameda County
Marin County Office of Education
San Francisco State University
San Francisco Unified School District
Teaching Positions
History Teacher, The Packer Collegiate Institute, NY
Writing Instructor, City College of San Francisco, CA
“Nada is an outgoing and enthusiastic teacher. I loved this class! It really taught me so much about the craft of fiction.”
What Clients Have Said
“Nada Djordjevich and her team led a stellar public outreach and participation process.”
County Planning Director“Organized, solutions oriented, and highly responsive to the unique needs of each site.”
Assistant Superintendent“A delight to work with. Utterly reliable and steadfast and will go the extra distance at every turn.”
Public Health Policy Specialist“Highly skilled and knowledgeable, with the capacity to analyze complex issues and implement innovative change.”
Associate Superintendent“A pleasure to work with. Very responsive to our desires and respectful of our school culture.” School Leader
Examples of Projects
Grant Development: Nada Djordjevich developed this dynamic STEM Partnership grant, led by San Rafael Elementary School District and including four district partners, San Francisco State University and the Exploratium. integrated Technolgy Engineering And Math Science, iTEAMS. The project website includes dozens of resources and examples of student and teacher work created through this innovative partnership grant.
Live Journal: A video representation of the iTEAMS project, a grant developed by Nada Djordjevich.
Information about the IMPACT grant: IMPACT (Improving Mathematics through Pittsburg's Active Collaboration of Teachers) was a teacher professional development grant for mathematics, grades 3-8, funded through June 2014 by the CA Department of Education. In total, Nada Djordjevich wrote and/or evaluated 12 CaMSP partnership grants.
Community Outreach & Planning: Nada Djordjevich led the community engagement efforts for this Community Climate Action Plan currently in place for the Unincorporated Areas of Alameda County. The project included extensive direct outreach, stakeholder interviews, and questionnaire and survey sampling, with in total more than 400 individuals providing input into this plan.
http://www.acgov.org/sustain/next/plan.htm
Evaluation of Federal Grants: Nada Djordjevich led the evaluation for this $29 million federal grant for five years in New Haven Unified School District. The valuation content included analysis of student academic and engagement indicators, family engagement, and professional learning resources.
Strategic Content Development: Nada Djordjevich has worked extensively with the Union City Family Center. Her work has included the update of the content, and a partnership with a web designer to restructure the website, to make it more sustainable for the clients to update themselves, particularly as news changes frequently for the vulnerable communities they serve in the East Bay.
Interviews and Articles
An Article on STEAM education in Marin County: “Empowering Educators and Students: STEAM as a Catalyst for Joy” co-authored with Michelle Drake, October 2019. This article describes the work of ATLAS, a grant written by Nada Djordjevich with the Marin County Office of Education. The purpose of ATLAS was to serve educators from across the county to develop multidisciplinary integrated units of study, based on a local environmental phenomenon, that could be shared within and across schools, districts, the region, and the state.
An Interview with Nada Djordjevich about Education: In 2018, the online publication Small Stones conducted an interview with Nada Djordjevich, Founder and CEO of West Coast Strategic. The interview, Public Education in Anxious Times and Hope in Everyday Actions, includes several resources on finding quality news in education.
An Interview, conducted by Nada Djordjevich with Carol Dweck. In this interview, Dr. Dweck the author of Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, provides a primer on fixed versus growth mindsets, and how this applies to students, adults, and success in academic, work, and personal relationships.
A Writing Workshop conducted by Nada Djordjevich. This article in the Jewish News of Northern California describes a writing project launched by Nada Djordjevich. This workshop, with Russian immigrants living in San Francisco, culminated in short essays. Since that event in 2011, the students have continued to write together and present their work in formal and informal ways.
Nada Djordjevich reviews Robert Putnam’s book on the decline of social capital in America. In her essay for On the Page magazine entitled, “Should You Bowl Alone?” she discusses this seminal work, and how the importance of community engagement can impact health and happiness, more than diet, exercise and marriage.
Other Information
LinkedIn - Nada Djordjevich’s professional resume and detailed work experience can be found here at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadadjordjevic/
While Executive Director at Gibson and Associates, Nada Djordjevich presented on Evaluation Methods at the Oakland Literacy Coalition.
West Coast Strategic Consulting Services, LLC. Please see more information about past clients, past projects, and independent consultant partnerships.