The Bryan Group:
Unparalleled Expertise
Our team is led by Bill Bryan, who has dedicated over 40 years to research and consulting services for implementing leadership, management, and educational best practices. Bill has a deep understanding of what drives effective leaders, having provided game-changing leadership and performance-improvement services at the individual, team, and organization levels.
As a former clinical psychologist and executive consultant for high-level enterprises, he built a team of professionals representing diverse perspectives that bring a deep understanding of district needs. Today, The Bryan Group team brings game-changing leaders with exceptional performance to your board, team, and organization. After all, your people, and what they can accomplish, will define the future of your school district. You need best-in-class leaders, and we make sure you get them.
Our team is rigorously trained in applied leadership, a crucial aspect of our leader search process. They are state-of-the-art in their knowledge of competency creation and evaluation, and their diverse professional backgrounds allow them to find high-level leaders with hard-to-measure characteristics, ones that make a true leader.
We work relentlessly to ensure the performance criteria established for the position truly reflects “the right stuff” for your next district or organization leader. Partner with The Bryan Group to find a leader for positive change.
Bill Bryan, Ph.D. is the founder and CEO of the Bryan Group, LLC. He is a former military officer and clinical psychologist who worked with children, adolescents, and families and consulted to schools. He has worked as a performance improvement consultant with Fortune 500 companies, the military, non-profits, and educational organizations, to include schools and districts in 13 states. He is the co-founder of the Center for Secondary School Redesign (CSSR) and remains in an advisory role to CSSR as VP for Leadership and Organization Development.
Bill is a speaker at the local and national level on effective leadership, team development, and competency-based assessment. For over 40 years he has engaged in applied competency and motivation research to determine what differentiates top-performing leaders from average and poor performers. This has led to the development of many performance enhancement programs for various client systems, and a new approach to executive search. He has held positions at five universities: American University (HR development), Bryant University (counseling), New England College (Ed.D. Leadership and dissertation advisor), Providence College (psychology and counseling), and the University of Rhode Island (labor relations, organization development, and advisor to the Executive MBA Program). Bill received a BA in Psychology from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The George Washington University.
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Keisha Stephenson Taylor, Ed.D is a TBG Senior Consultant and Diversity Sourcing Manager. She is the Director of Educational Partnerships at NAF and has been a part of growing and developing the professional development opportunities for over 3,000 educators in the network. She leads the annual professional development conferences and institutes across the US and manages partnerships with curriculum and postsecondary partners.
A former curriculum supervisor in the area of language arts and professional development, her teaching experience was in the English content area where she served as a teacher and team facilitator on a 9th grade small learning community team. In addition, she also served as a Coalition of Essential Schools whole school reform facilitator.
Keisha has been appointed to various state advisories throughout her career, and most recently as a board member of Learning Forward NJ. She has been a supervisor, teacher, team leader, and a school improvement coach.
Keisha’s expertise is in personalization. She worked on the CSSR team for several years on a variety of projects to create student advisory programs for students in grades 9-12 in which students and staff are trained in student led conferencing. Keisha has also been involved in a number of whole school redesign projects in Smaller Learning Communities schools.
Keisha holds a B.A. in English and Secondary Education, a M.A. in Higher Education Administration from Rowan University as well as a Ed.D. in Innovation and Leadership from Wilmington University. Keisha resides in NJ.
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Virginia Eves, MS is a TBG Senior Consultant. She has spent the majority of her educational experience, both in the classroom and as an administrator, focused on closing achievement and opportunity gaps for students, particularly low-income students, students of color, and those with special needs, who are often underserved in an educational system that should provide supports and assistance necessary for them to succeed.
Virginia’s belief that all students can learn at high levels is best evidenced by the successes and awards that were bestowed upon Madison High School during her tenure as Principal there. After earning the Breakthrough High School Award, Ms. Eves was asked to relate the challenges of overcoming resistant staff and community, as well as barriers to student success, she encountered at Madison High School in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). In Chapter 6, “Collaborative Leadership Changes and Challenges to the Idea of ‘Traditional’ Neighborhood Schools,” the chapter she was asked to write for author Dr. Joe DiMartino’s book, The Personalized High School: Making Learning Count for Adolescents, she told the story of the “Renaissance of Madison High.”
As a central office administrator, Virginia had oversight and management of Transitional Kindergarten-Grade 12 Instructional Support Services (Assistant Superintendent), Office of College, Career and Technical Education (Director), and 20 Innovative Small High Schools and six Alternative High Schools (Program Manager).
Virginia holds a BS in Education and Psychology from University of Iowa and an MS in Counseling from California State University, Fullerton.
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Nora Bryan Behrens is a TBG Project Coordinator. She has a BA from Dartmouth College and has spent twenty years in marketing and operations management positions for both online and brick-and-mortar corporations. She has consistently achieved proven financial results by building long term productive and efficient processes as well as continually innovates in creative and marketing efforts to bring in new customers. She has excelled in building and leading high performance teams and has shown decisive problem solving leadership in various corporate venues to include programming and technical environments.
Nora has extensive experience in the non-profit and advocacy arenas which includes roles as the Board Chair of Family TIES of Nevada, the Parent Co-Chair of the Nevada Interagency Coordinating Council, and founder of the CP Parent Network – the only support and networking group for parents of children with disabilities in the state of Nevada.
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Michele L. Munson, Ed.D., is a TBG Senior Consultant. She brings thirty years in educational administration 16 years as a Superintendent, plus experience as assistant superintendent and bureau administration at the New Hampshire Department of Education, and NH EPSCoR. Through her work, she has demonstrated expertise in: researching and analyzing root causes of equity; promoting and integrating STEM; supporting teachers to develop and to use effective instructional practices; enhancing compensatory education strategies; developing differentiated and personalized curriculum; assisting school reform efforts; as well as planning and coordinating professional development, and student assessment. Having participated in many national projects and working with representatives from numerous states, she brings an understanding of varied state protocols and statutes to our work.
Michele also relies on 20 years of teaching and consulting that encompassed all grade levels (K-12) in multiple school systems in a wide range of economic, cultural, and demographic situations to enhance her understanding of the needs of schools, students, and communities.
A recognized educator of the Gifted, Michele, named New Hampshire Gifted Educator of the Year in 2005, has won numerous awards for; fostering creativity and innovation, and for developing the Connecticut Invention Convention, The Young Inventors and Creators Program with the US Patent and Trademark Office, and Innovations Across Generations programs. She was also one of the initiators of the University of New Hampshire’s Tech Camps that she directed for 7 years.
Michele is a strong advocate for public education and brings her expertise and excitement for helping school systems and their communities make a real difference to their children to our team.
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Susan Bradley is a TBG Senior Consultant. Susan has also been a Learning Disabilities Field Placement Faculty with Granite State College since 2015. Susan teaches the Advanced Endorsement capstone course: Advanced Curriculum, Assessment, and Instruction for Learning Disabilities, EDU 740. Susan received her B.S. degree in Communication Disorders at Northwestern University and her M.Ed. degree in Special Education at the University of Pittsburgh.
Susan is currently serving as the Out of District Coordinator in the Pittsfield, New Hampshire school district. For fifteen years prior to this assignment, she served as a special education case manager at Pittsfield Elementary School. This past year Susan concluded her position as a Co-Project Manager for the district level systems change project for the Pittsfield, NH school district, which was a six-year grant funded by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. Susan has previously had the opportunity to be a school change coach with the Center for Secondary School Redesign. Susan has taught in Maryland, Ohio, Texas, and California in the field of special education.
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Ross Morse is a TBG Senior Consultant. Ross has spent the better part of the last six years supporting continuous improvement processes within the Pittsfield, NH School District. In the role of community liaison, Ross facilitated community conversations to guide stakeholders through the decision making processes of a transforming district toward competency-based education and the community supports necessary to ensure successful outcomes. As the former publisher/editor of a local community paper, he brings an analytical eye to organizational development to educational leadership through the perspective of the community it serves.Ross has aBA in Communications: Public Relations/Advertising from Emerson College, Boston, MA, and continues his personal development in project management through the University of New Hampshire. Most recently, Ross has received certification as an Agile Scrum Master (CSM), honing his skills as a servant leader, facilitating process improvement methodologies and the self-organizing of development teams.
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Alison Freeman, MSW, LCSW is a TBG Senior Consultant and Product Development Manager. She serves as a member of the leadership team at the City of Boston’s Age Strong Commission. As a director within the Commission, she leads a team that assesses community need, fosters collaborative community partnerships, distributes federal dollars to several local nonprofits, and monitors programs to ensure that they are successfully meeting performance standards. Alison has held roles in both the private and public sectors, in which she has led the hiring process of new staff, developed organizational policies and procedures, and facilitated the process of role clarification. She is driven by a passion for people, equity, and community. Through her work with individuals across the lifespan, Alison understands the value and necessity of effective relationship-formation and diagnostic skills to enable collaboration, role competency, team cohesion, supportive networks, and empowered communities.
Alison wears many professional hats, as the leader of a task force, an active member of a statewide board, facilitator of advocacy courses, and chair of a statewide professional committee. In these positions, she collaborates with individuals who hold leadership roles, including, but not limited to, Executive Directors, Senior Vice Presidents, State Directors, Chief Financial Officers, and Elected Officials. Alison is a Licensed Certified Social Worker, with a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of New Hampshire and a graduate certificate in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University.
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Marcia McGovern is a TBG Senior Consultant. She spent forty-two years as an educator in public high schools in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Marcia began her career as an English teacher in Rhode Island where she served as Student Council Advisor, taught URI’s Writing 101 to seniors, and designed a peer mentoring program to help freshmen successfully transition to the high school.
Marcia was principal of an urban high school in Rhode Island and a suburban high school in Massachusetts. In each of these schools she developed and coached Peer Helping Networks to give students voice and autonomy to explore issues they identified as important.
Following her retirement, Marcia joined the Board of Directors at the Greene School, a public environmental charter school in West Greenwich, RI, where she sat on the academic committee and lead the evaluation process for the head of school. She then joined the Center for Secondary School Redesign (CSSR) where her roles included School Change Coach; Director of Events and Communication; and grant writer. She worked on the redesign of middle and high schools in multiple districts in such areas as designing/implementing advisories and freshman academies as well as instituting protocols for creating effective teams. Early in the redesign process, she arranged for teams of teachers, students, and parents to visit East Side Community School in New York City or the Parker Charter Essential School in Devens, MA, to help them envision what transformational change might look like in their own schools. Subsequently, targeted professional development was arranged through The Sizer Teacher Center at Parker.
Marcia holds a B.A. in Secondary Education from the University of Rhode Island; an M.Ed. from Rhode Island College; and a Secondary Administration Certificate from Providence College.
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James Larson is a TBG Consultant. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Engineering from Arizona State University’s Polytechnic School, which has pioneered an implementation of a flipped classroom approach grounded in project-based learning. In addition to his project courses that emphasized the importance of including stakeholder perspectives in system design, he was also a recipient of a National Science Foundation scholarship focusing on Broadening the Reach of Engineering through Community Engagement (BRECE). Projects undertaken as a BRECE scholar and student of this program included designing interactive kid’s museum exhibits, developing a Rube Goldberg Machine contest program with Arizona middle schools, and delivering offline, solar-powered digital learning libraries to Peace Corps volunteers working in Pacific Island Nations.
James has conducted additional research into self-directed learners in STEM (Makers), and how families support young Makers by creating a learning environment that resembles a Montessori classroom at home, often unintentionally. He went on to characterize how project-based learners in his ASU program develop adaptive expertise by practicing design thinking. After connecting these learning outcomes with engineering program accreditation requirements, he was able to show how the flipped classroom approach incentivized students to go beyond what is required of them in a way that better prepares them for engineering in a professional world that is itself continuously adapting with new technology. Since graduating, James has worked as a strategy consultant for entrepreneurs and small business owners to refine operational models to facilitate learning at work to maintain competitive advantages and employee satisfaction.
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