For school systems, colleges, and creative communities: programs, curricula, and the moments that make learning stick.
Watch a short film about my path
People change when a moment catches them off guard: an unexpected visual, a carefully crafted question, an instance of true connection. My work is the intentional design of learning moments like these.
They tend to happen at the threshold, where disciplines, cultures, and identities meet. That is where I like to work.
From strategic program design to one-off workshops, shaped to the institution, the moment, and the people in the room.
In-person and virtual sessions for educators and organizations navigating change. Recent sessions have covered writing craft, adult learning theory, and what AI is doing to the way we read, write, and think. I also give keynotes and facilitate panels.
Writing craft, AI in the classroom, keynotes.
Creative deliverables that make learning legible: explainer videos and scripts, visual syllabi, facilitation guides, and learning products. I also write for leaders who need to say something well, from a keynote to the one paragraph that has to land.
Explainer videos, visual syllabi, speechwriting.
Coherent learning arcs, from cohort-based leadership programs to semester-long online courses, faculty institutes, OER textbooks, and curriculum audits. A designer’s eye on learning; an andragogue’s eye on design.
Leadership cohorts, courses, OER, curriculum audits.
An illustrated retelling of Farid al-Attar’s 13th-century Persian poem as a meditation on leadership, collective wisdom, and the leader within. Original writing and hand-drawn illustrations.
Attar’s birds, redrawn as mine.
A deck of 132 facilitation protocols across 11 categories: connectors, close-reading structures, movement, adult learning frames. Every card flips to its steps and cites its source.
Built for my own team first.
Scriptwriting for a collaborative explainer video on Texas soil classifications, produced with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension for agricultural audiences.
A conceptual video on the origins of process pedagogy and how it shapes writing instruction in the college classroom.
A UX-informed approach to rewriting the college syllabus: part critique, part practical instructor guide.
A session on mindful productivity and Notion-based PARA for Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain community.
Live-drawn sketchnotes from a workshop on how we frame failure, paired with a written reflection on disappointment, desire, and drive.
Every piece here is made by my own hand: oil and acrylic on canvas, ink on paper, and digital illustration on iPad. An ongoing conversation between mediums.
Unschooled, then Oxford. The long way round.
Years of unschooling as a teenager lent me unstructured time to think, to find connections and explore my passions for literature, art, and history. Eventually I entered formal schooling again, this time as an adult learner, and it was through my classroom experiences, both as student and teacher, that I came to care deeply about education and how people learn.
I earned a GED at sixteen and enrolled at community college shortly after, which instilled in me a deep appreciation for the importance of accessible education. I went on to earn a Joint Honours degree in International Relations and Middle East Studies from St. Andrews in Scotland, and then a master’s in creative writing from St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in 2008.
Back in the U.S., I started teaching at a community college and never really stopped: twenty years of literature, composition, and humanities across three countries, three states, and seven institutions. Somewhere in there the work widened from teaching people to designing how people learn.
Today that work lives at The Holdsworth Center, where I direct programs for Texas public school superintendents and the people who want to become them. On the side: essays and fiction, paint and ink, a notebook habit that borders on devotion, and selective consulting for K–12 and higher ed.
If you’re building something that asks people to learn, a program, a course, a room full of leaders, I’d like to help you design it.
Bring me a workshop, a curriculum, a keynote, or just a question about how people learn. Long lunches welcome.
