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About Me:
Ms. Stevens cut her professional teeth as a management consultant along a circuitous and unusual route. Early in her career as an entry-level civilian employee of the US military, she learned the lessons of discipline, organization, and accountability. Experiences in academia at Long Island University-C.W. Post, initially as a student of chemistry, and finally a student of economics and business management, and subsequently as a university employee, taught her to appreciate the value of theory as applied to practice. Positions in retail management provided her with on-the-job instruction in marketing, sales, and customer service. Subsequent professional positions in the insurance industry offered her an opportunity to hone skills in investigation, deductive reasoning, negotiation, and brinkmanship.
Prior to establishing Executive Performance as a principal, Ms. Stevens founded GRS Associates, a management consulting firm specializing in services for small- to mid- sized businesses, with a niche in minority and women owned business enterprises. Excited about cutting edge technologies and understanding the significant impact that the World Wide Web would have on every sector of education and training, Ms. Stevens' has completed her graduate certificate in Online Teaching and Learning at California State University-Hayward. Experiences in instructional design, classroom training, e-Learning and building online communities prepared her to be co-creator of Executive Performance’s innovative culturally dynamic methodologies for managing, communicating and learning.
With over 25 years of extensive management experience in strategic and business planning, community development, project management, designing and implementing improvement initiatives, developing financing packages, and designing and delivering continuing education, Ms. Stevens’ professional skills are in great demand. She has provided services to enterprises as diverse as Stanley Steemer International, the New York City Board of Education, SUNY College at Old Westbury, Dowling College, Nassau BOCES, Police Activity League, Fleet Bank, Greenpoint Bank, Roslyn Savings Bank, CMP Media, the American Advertising Federation, and numerous metropolitan area corporations, small businesses, educational institutions, and non-profits.
A successful development professional, Ms. Stevens’ proposals have been funded by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, New York's Empire State Development Corp, NYNEX/Verizon, Charles Hayden Foundation, and others. Additionally, she is often invited to speak on topics concerning: diversity, small business, community development, minority and women-owned business, education, and e-Learning. She is co-author of The Mosaica Guide for Cultural Communicators, and a contributing author in The Practice of Power: Finding Success in a Diverse World (Leading Edge Press), by Janine and Tom Fondon.
An active participant in community affairs, Ms. Stevens’ volunteer activities have provided synergy with her professional practice. She coordinated Long Island regional events for the National Black Family Technology Awareness Week project that was funded by Chase Bank and the U. S. Department of Justice. She participated as a Long Island representative to dialog about the future of education and learning at the 1999 “School of the Future” global conference that included international Ministers of Education, state education commissioners, university leadership, corporate universities and other global stakeholders.
Stevens' current research and practice is focused on integrating culturally dynamic strategies for e-learning using the free open-source course management system, Moodle.
A refugee from proprietary online learning platforms, along with her business partner, Sheila Gatling, they have developed expertise using Moodle to design and/or deliver a diverse array of online courses for learners of all ages and stages. In addition to training Moodle instructors and designing Moodle courses, she also assesses courses and makes recommendations for differentiated learning strategies.
Her company operates Moodle installations as virtual implementations of their own philosophy and practice for culturally dynamic learning environments. On their EPLearners.com site, they design and facilitate a diverse array of Moodle courses covering various disciplines across a lifewide learning spectrum: K-12, higher and continuing education, professional development, and public awareness projects.
In 2004, Stevens and her partner joined with Tom Murdock of Thinking Distance, Inc. as co-moderators of the free, diverse and collegial global community of practice for Moodle instructors at Faculty Room, providing pedagogical and technical support. Thinking Distance also co-sponsored a Moodle course used to facilitate interdisciplinary learning in English Language Arts and Social Studies for low-income English Language Learners from Edmund W. Miles Middle School in Amityville, NY. Stevens and Gatling have also been active contributors to Frances Bell's (University of Salford, UK) Collaboration Across Borders (CABWEB) project, designing and facilitating Moodle courses for an international online community of university faculty and their students.
By 2005 Stevens, Gatling and Murdock joined forces to co-found the Baltimore-based company, Moodlerooms, Inc. in an effort to unlock learning by delivering best practice affordable Moodle services and support to enterprises, institutions and individual instructors.
Previous online learning conference presentations with Gatling at the Association for Advancement in Computer Education's E-Learn 2004 World Conference and the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education - SITE 2005 and 2007 International Conferences, MoodleMoot NE 2005, New York State Education Department's In-Service Conference, and Microcomputers in Education Conference 2007 (MEC) have been very well received.
A much sought after board member by non-profits, Stevens has also served on the boards of various educational and non-profit organizations. For the past 29 years, Ms. Stevens has been a member of the national public service organization, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
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