Ms. Nelcida Rodriguez, Founder and President of Innovative Scholars, is a leader in education innovation and classroom instruction with more than eleven years of experience managing and implementing supplemental educational services. Originally from New Jersey, the daughter of immigrant parents, Ms. Rodriguez has always had a passion for the empowerment of exceptional populations through learning. As a result, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Sciences, from Temple University (Class of ‘09), and initiated her career within the field of specialized programs.

As a Senior Program Manager for Rocket Learning (now part of McGraw Hill Education), she led a team that provided supplemental learning programs to over 150 schools across 7 partnered districts throughout the East Coast and Midwest. She grew her team from 8 to over 20 full-time employees while building training tools to manage the development of the company's human capital and managing over 10 million dollars in revenue. Now, as the founding owner and operator of Innovative Scholars, Ms. Rodriguez leads an inclusive organization offering high-quality, successful programs to qualified students who live in Title I attendance areas and attend private schools.

In 2017, Ms. Rodriguez founded Innovative Scholars to address the need to close the achievement gap between students and standard performance in reading and mathematics in Chicago, Illinois. In doing so, Ms. Rodriguez joins the select few partners who help Chicago Public schools meet their federal mandate to deliver high-quality intervention services to at-risk students in private and parochial schools. Ms. Rodriguez currently provides such services to 10 private schools in Chicago, servicing nearly 300 students. Under her leadership, Innovative Scholars implements a blended curriculum and program model that focuses on individualized growth and achievement, by providing evidence-based instructional practices that are informed by comprehensive and specific data on student performance. Ms. Rodriguez is intentional in providing her staff with a high level of training and professional development to ensure that they have quality tools, strategies and resources. Under her leadership, Innovative Scholars has raised the level of training and expertise of Title I teachers and worked with hundreds of children who were struggling in school to improve their educational performance, learning, and outcomes. Along with developing and implementing strategies and program infrastructure to support scale, she has grown her company to a 1.5 million operations budget and has recruited a highly qualified team of more than 20 people.

In the future, Ms. Rodriguez plans to offer Innovative Scholars in more educational markets to meet the demand for high quality, proven supplemental educational services. Ms. Rodriguez believes that one key to the success of the Innovative Scholars team of professional educators is through collaborative ventures that center a child’s educational experience on the needs of the child, their family, and their community. And so, she carries the words of Dr. Martin Luther King “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others.”

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