Featured Presentations

  
Allyson Byrd
Founder and CEO -- The Purpose Within 

“My role is to help people thrive vs. survive in life; whether a CEO, working mom or entrepreneur or college student – I keep the process straightforward, simpleand clear-cut as possible to achieve the desired outcomes of purpose fulfilled.” – Allyson Byrd

A noted speaker, author and life coach, she inspires individuals to live in purpose, embrace passion and achieve personal greatness through balance in work and life. In 2008, Allyson founded The Purpose Within as a unique tool to assist the average persons transition from “purpose discovery” to “purpose mastery”. 

Byrd’s extensive and cross-functional expertise in training and adult learning, leadership, business development and sales, customer service and team building was honed over a decade of development with Sandra Steen & Associates, Marketstar, US Cellular, Manpower Inc., Wells Fargo, Hoover and BlackBerry partnered with professional development courses.  Allyson oversees a core team of leadership executives and consultants to ensure her clients reach their greatest potential. Through vulnerable, authentic and inspirational messages, Allyson teaches corporations, non-profit organizations, small businesses and their leaders how to clear obstacles that negatively impact their culture, processes and their people.  Whether the topic surrounds Leadership, Teamwork, Communications or Customer Service, Allyson’s messages are captivating; she loves to engage with each audience by inviting them to discover the source of their discontent and resignation, and reconnect with their greatest dreams.

Allyson won the 2010 San Antonio Woman of the Year Award from the Circle of Influence and was recently nominated by the National Association for Women Business Owners for the 2011 Rising Star Award; she is featured in the 2011 Who’s Who in San Antonio, Texas. 


  
Duncan McCrann
President -- Duncan Consulting

In his 20 years in the commercial real estate industry, he invested his teaching skills in training, inspiring, and challenging business professionals. While serving as President and CEO of several fast-growing real estate construction companies, Duncan McCrann built executive teams, led strategic planning, and oversaw business operations in construction, finance, accounting, marketing, human resources, and investment management.

Duncan McCrann was a founding contributor at the MIT Center for Real Estate and lectured there in Entrepreneurial Management. The call to teach compelled him to embark on a new adventure — in private education — as a founding team member of the Hyde/Woodstock School, a high school for struggling teenagers. At Hyde, he taught chemistry, humanities, and coached JV women's basketball. He soon became the Head of School with complete bottom line responsibility for the cultural, academic, and operational responsibility of the school.

Having answered the call in private education, Duncan McCrann then entered the public charter school movement as President and Chief Operating Officer of KIPP Houston, the fastest growing region in the 100-school KIPP network. KIPP Houston is engaged in a $600 million dollar, 43 school, 20,000 student expansion in the Houston metropolitan area. Mr. McCrann supervised all aspects of the growth plan while installing systems, procedures, and best practices in all operational departments of the home office. He also served as Head of High Schools for one year.

Inspired to make a larger contribution to the education reform movement, Duncan launched Duncan McCrann Consulting, a national consulting practice in charter school growth management and is now helping to scale high-performing Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) across the country.

Duncan McCrann is a graduate of Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Social Relations.  Duncan has authored multiple published articles on public charter schools.


   
Brian L. Carpenter Ph.D & Associates, LLC
President and CEO

Described by others with such phrases as “the platinum standard on board and governance matters” and “the foremost authority on charter school governance in the country,” one-time high-school dropout Dr. Brian L. Carpenter is a prolific writer, speaker and board trainer whose impact is felt in charter schools throughout the country. The list of institutions that have expressed thanks for his work includes countless schools, as well as prominent organizations such as Ball State University, the South Carolina Public Charter School District, the Governor of Delaware, Harvard University, and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.

Though known for his expertise on charter schools, those close to Brian know that he is anything but one-dimensional. His professional life experiences include seven years of peacetime service in the Marine Corps, adjunct teaching at the collegiate and university levels, and twelve years as a school leader. He advocated parental choices in education as part of the prestigious Mackinac Center for Public Policy for three years before going on to become CEO of the National Charter Schools Institute at Central Michigan University, where he published two books and numerous papers and articles on the importance of sound governance as an indispensable key to building a high-performing school. Always an entrepreneur at heart, Brian formed his own consulting business in the summer of 2009, under whose banner he continues his passion of helping schools.

Both of Brian’s books, Charter School Board University and The Seven Outs: Strategic Planning Made Easy for Charter Schools (available on Amazon.com) are widely read by charter school leaders and used by other consultants. His third book, Preventing Charter School Train Wrecks will be published early next year.

After joining the Marines at age 17, Brian eventually returned to school, earning his associates, bachelors, masters, and most recently, doctoral degrees. His Ph.D. was conferred by Capella University in the fall of 2008. Using his dissertation to study the characteristics of boards whose schools dissolved, Dr. Carpenter became the first researcher in the country to study this particular aspect of charter school closures. He is also one of a few hundred consultants worldwide to have been personally trained by Dr. John and Miriam Carver in the theory and application of Policy Governance®. Brian is a member of the International Policy Governance Association and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.


  
Yvonne Chamblin
IDEA Public Schools -- Marketing and Communcations Specialist

Yvonne Chamblin joined IDEA Public Schools in July 2009 to lead the organization’s Marketing & Communications activities. While in this role, she successfully launched IDEA’s first comprehensive marketing campaign to increase brand awareness, recruit low-income families, and fill new teaching positions with high quality candidates. Since then she has built up the IDEA brand by integrating key graphics and messaging into the organization’s website, campus culture, employee events, and more. She lends her expertise to several of IDEA’s organizational initiatives and most recently coordinated three consecutive College Signing Day events for IDEA’s graduating seniors. Ms. Chamblin is a graduate of the University of Texas Pan American and lives in Weslaco, Texas, with her husband Steve.