about
Meet Our Growing Team
About AIW’s Founder
Glenda M. Francis, Founder & CEO
Life Coach | Educator
Glenda M. Francis is the founder and CEO of Audacious Inner Works Institute for personal development and capacity building. She is an Associate Certified (ACC) life coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF), consultant, and former constructivist educator.
Over the span of a 23-year career in public education in New York City, Glenda dedicated 15 of those years as an elementary classroom teacher serving diverse populations across multiple school settings. She embodied a passionate sense of urgency for transforming the lives of her students and gained a reputation for cultivating powerful classroom cultures that fostered risk-taking, rigor, and depth of learning. The hallmark of her teaching practices included facilitation of her students’ intellectual dispositions, communication skills, and social-emotional intelligence towards fulfilling their potential and role as global citizens.
Across these communities, Glenda emerged as a teacher leader and her classrooms became dynamic lab-sites of learning for her peers especially in the content area of mathematics. As an outgrowth of this work, alongside her colleague Dr. Frances Blanchette, Principal Christina Fuentes, and Master Content Coach Antonia Cameron, she co-authored the article “The Role of Communities of Practice in Developing Teacher Leadership,” which was published in the 74th Yearbook of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Glenda’s masterful teaching practices have impacted a wide diversity of students, teachers, and school communities and would lead to a new career path as a math consultant.
For eight years, Glenda consulted with Metamorphosis Teaching Learning Communities, the pre-eminent mathematics content coaching organization in the United States based in New York City. In this role, she was tasked with facilitating teachers’ development of elementary math content and their ability to teach content in ways that are developmentally and mathematically sound to young learners. As a consultant, she would be challenged to “sharpen the saw”—refine her skill sets in facilitation and communication, especially “crucial conversations,” to unearth teachers’ belief systems, mindsets, and attitudes that impacted the work of teaching and learning.
In 2019, Glenda expanded her portfolio into professional coaching and founded Audacious Inner Works Institute (AIW), where she seamlessly blends her education and coaching expertise to curate power learning experiences. As a life coach/empowerment specialist, her mission remains to power greatness in her clients by tapping into their own deep reservoir of potential. She is passionate about the empowerment of women, especially Black women who have been historically burdened by intersecting oppressions, and is committed to supporting them to rewrite the scripts and thrive as the architects of their lives. This mission is at the epicenter of her work in coaching conversations, social media, speaking engagements, and the various signature workshops she has judiciously crafted.
Whether teaching young learners, coaching educators, facilitating workshops and institutes, or partnering with clients, Glenda has thrived in a sustained mission to cultivate greatness in the human potential. She engages you with love, deep listening, and a fierce commitment to your learning and transformation. This stance is underpinned by her allegiance to her own self-cultivation and pursuing a robust life anchored in her well-being. Described as an “inspirational powerhouse,” you can experience Glenda’s magnetic presence and warmth through coaching conversations, collaborations, and AIW’s programs and institutes.
A native Caribbean “island girl,” Glenda loves the tropics. When she’s away on vacation, she can usually be found sunbathing on a beautiful beach or barefoot somewhere in her homeland, St. Croix Virgin Island. She lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with her husband and life partner.
Credentials
Glenda is an accredited Associate Certified Coach (ACC) with the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She earned her Certified Professional Coach (CPC) credential from the International Coach Academy (ICA), an ICF accredited school with “a 20-year reputation for excellence and a unique ‘no single model’ approach.”
Glenda holds a Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, in Black and Puerto Rican Studies from Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and a Master of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, in the School of Education, Department of Applied Psychology, from New York University.
Contact Glenda for speak engagements or life coaching and consulting services.
Credentials
Najla Purdy
Educator | Consultant | Founder, Own Your Brilliance
Najla consults with the Black Teacher Collaborative based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she serves as the STEM Solutions Lead on the Program and Innovation Team. In this capacity, she designs Math and Science based instructional experiences and resources for Black teachers across the nation. Najla also serves as an adjunct professor at Bank Street College where she teaches a Curriculum and Instruction graduate course in the Math Leadership department.
In 2018, Najla founded Own Your Brilliance whose mission is to provide a safe space for girls and women of color to experience mathematics through problem posing and solving rather than rote learning. Own Your Brilliance “empowers them to bring their whole selves to a math space where girls can utilize personal, local, national, or global community contexts to incorporate learning and leadership.”
Najla is passionate about developing girls and women so they are able to see their light and confidently share their gifts with the world.
Credentials
Colleen Reasoner
Digital Media Specialist | Founder, Soulful Jungle
Shazanah “Zanah” Lunsford
Events Manager
Cassandra “Cas” Camille Frasco
Virtual Marketing Assistant
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