Senior Leadership & Staff

Courtne Thomas, Ed.D, is the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at New York Edge The Excellence Project. Courtne is also the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Educational Elevation, Inc. She received her bachelor’s degree in communications from North Carolina Agricultural and State University, ranked as one of the top 5 historically black colleges and universities. She continued to pursue higher education, receiving a master’s degree in reading and supervision from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 2009, she made the life-changing decision to return to school in pursuit of a terminal degree, which she completed with the successful defense of her project titled Academic Resilience: Narratives of High-Achieving Black Female Middle School Adolescents. Dr. Thomas has received many action research grants and fellowships, and she has been appointed to several review panels and boards including the Orange Board of Education. One of her greatest accomplishments occurred in August 2012, when she received a prestigious Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education. This opportunity enabled her to travel to Mexico and Colombia for six weeks with 15 educators from across the United States. The purpose of the trip was to conduct research and lead master classes and seminars about culturally relevant curriculum and culturally responsive teaching. An output of this experience was a culturally rich curriculum unit plan submitted to the U.S. Department of Education with access to educators across the nation. Other honors include receiving an action research grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, which enabled her to travel to Hiroshima, Japan to research the atomic bombing, and a National Education Association Learning and Leadership Grant to explore how the single-gender classroom format creates opportunities that do not exist in co-educational classrooms. Dr. Thomas is an expert in pedagogy, reading and literacy, transformative leadership, and servant leadership. She has several published articles including a piece in the New York Times inspired by her published curriculum. And, she plans to continue to collaborate with her professional colleagues.