Meet the TxCEE Team

TxCEE staff has experience in a number of roles, including teacher and district administrative leadership positions as well as experience at the state and regional level. The combined experience of the TxCEE team provides expertise in building teacher and leader capacity. All team members are committed to providing differentiated support and learning opportunities that meet the needs of classroom teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators.

Joann Taylor serves as the Chief TxCEE Officer. She provides leadership, direction, and oversight of all TxCEE projects and staff. Taylor serves as Project Director for the Teacher and School Leaders (TSL) grant and oversees the TSL staff. She directs field support efforts to TSL districts, including training and site visits, to ensure the effectiveness of TEEM. She began at TxCEE as the Human Resource Strategies Coordinator focusing on supporting districts as they build Human Capital Management Systems. Before joining TxCEE, Joann served as the Director of Educator Effectiveness for the Austin Independent School District (AISD) where she managed Professional Pathways for Teachers, a Human Capital System that blended appraisal, compensation, leadership pathways, and professional development to focus resources on building the capacity of teachers through supports and rewards. Prior to serving as Director, Joann worked in several roles in the Office of Educator Quality building the AISD REACH program and working with student learning objectives. Before joining Educator Quality, Joann was a high school English teacher for ten years. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and earned a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University.

Jessica Sievert Navarro serves as the Director of Partnerships at TxCEE. Navarro directs services with TxCEE partners, including strategic planning, contract development, and implementation support of educator residencies. She oversees TxCEE business operations and assists with writing grants, proposals, and reports. Prior to joining TxCEE, she served as the State Director for Communities In Schools and as a Program Evaluation Project Manager at the Texas Education Agency. Those roles provided her opportunities to manage statewide initiatives, develop standards and policies, and bring high-quality training and support to the highest need schools. Mrs. Navarro earned her Bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Master’s degree in Public Administration from Texas State University.

Dr. Daryl Michel is the Director of School Improvement at TxCEE. He directs the development of school improvement initiatives to improve human capital and student achievement in partner organizations. Prior to joining the TxCEE team, Dr. Michel worked at The University of Texas at Austin Institute for Public School Initiatives as the assistant director and then director of academic foundations. He was an adjunct professor at Concordia University and a project manager and reading technical assistance specialist at The University of Texas System. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from the University of Northern Iowa, a Master of Science in Educational Administration from Texas A&M University-Kingsville, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Education: School Improvement from Texas State University.

As Research and Evaluation Manager at TxCEE, Dr. Shana Shaw manages all TxCEE Research and Evaluation activities. She conducts evaluations of TxCEE projects and coordinates with external partners on research and evaluation activities. Shaw assists staff with formative analysis of data as needed to guide TxCEE projects. Before joining TxCEE, Shaw served as a Senior Research Specialist at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, where she managed several large-scale researcher-practitioner partnership grants. She also previously worked at two Austin-based research organizations—Gibson Consulting Group and SEDL—where much of her work focused on educator effectiveness. At SEDL, she also led technical assistance on educator evaluation systems for state education agencies. After completing her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, Shaw was a Data Fellow with Harvard’s Strategic Data Project in the Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD). In this role, she supported empirical examinations of the district’s human capital management policies and evaluated the FWISD’s DATE and TIF grants. In addition to her Ph.D., she holds an M.A. in Program Evaluation from The University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in Psychology from Stephen. F. Austin State University.