The Power of Relationships: Tiffany Law on Building Trust Across Districts and Impact Within EdTech
Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by Friendlytics edu, where innovation meets inclusion in education. I'm your cohost, Nisha Srinivasan.
Matt Giovanniello:And I'm Matt Jovanillo, the CEO and co founder of Friendlytics. At Frenalytics, we put special education and English language learners front and center. Our award winning Frenalytics EDU platform helps streamline progress monitoring, improve communication compliance, and offers truly personalized learning to your students of all abilities.
Nisha Srinivasa:Each episode of our podcast features candid conversations with district and school leaders, classroom change makers, ed tech founders, and industry executives, all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities. With the focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, Exceptional Educators is exceptionally thrilled to welcome Tiffany Law. She is the current COO of the Institute of Education Innovation, a nationwide district leader membership community that supports innovation. Tiffany supports the momentum of technology and education through building strategic partnerships, mentorship, and a commitment to a vision where educators and students alike are able to succeed.
Nisha Srinivasa:Tiffany, thank you so much for being here today. Welcome.
Tiffany Law:Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with y'all.
Nisha Srinivasa:I'm really excited for one. Get to know a little bit more to your talk today. And just to get us started, a question that we've been asking all of the guests that come on our show is the following. I'm sure it's one that you're familiar with in your line of work, that is what is your why? So what has brought you to this world of education, technology, and innovation, and what continues to keep you here?
Tiffany Law:Absolutely. I've got a good one. Mine is a little similar to Matt's. My father, both my parents were educators, long, long term educators. My mother was, thirty five years in Baltimore County, and my father was, forty six years, both Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
Tiffany Law:And with years like that, I swear I was not gonna be an educator. I was gonna have nothing to do with education. I was going in every direction away from it because I was not gonna follow in their footsteps at all. And here I sit. Right.
Tiffany Law:So my father was my absolute hero. He served his time as a principal, and he was such an incredible leader that as he grew, he brought very diverse teachers with him as he was in the inner city, and it was very important to him to grow women leaders. I thought, how amazing is it that this man in the building just building up these women? And I thought people other than me think my dad's really cool. These young ladies just thought my dad was cool.
Tiffany Law:And normally people don't think dads are cool, but mine was. I don't know if y'all had American education week in your schools when y'all were growing up. But your parent would come in and they'd sit in your class for a day or a period or whatever it might be. And everybody would be mortified that their parent was sitting in the back of the classroom, and they would spend time in the class and maybe come to lunch with you or, like, gym class. Every kid, especially the girls, were mortified if their parents were there.
Tiffany Law:I was so excited that my daddy was there. He come in in his suit. It was just the best thing ever because everybody wanted to be like my dad, who was in the same school district. And I thought maybe there's something to this. When my dad passed away, I realized that he left unfinished business.
Tiffany Law:There were a lot of leaders out there that had not been tapped. There were folks who were sort of dangling, and I have the ability to have a voice and a mechanism to reach out and find a way to reach them and continue on with what my dad started and be able to build relationships and do what I do best. So in my dad's honor, continue on all of those things and do so with the things I do best, honoring what he did best.
Matt Giovanniello:That's so sweet and very similar to my why and how we got started with everything on this side of the house, Tiffany. I love that. Tiffany and I go way back, Nisha. And from the moment I met Tiffany, I was like, there is a special spark here that you don't catch oftentimes in education. Think everything from the speed to the sheer passion and everything in between makes your role and your importance in education that much more pronounced.
Matt Giovanniello:Instead of working in one school district in the way that your dad did, you now have the ability to affect change across literally hundreds of school districts all over the country. School districts that are just a couple 100 students, all the way up through school districts that support hundreds of thousands of kids. Thinking about your role now at IEI, first off, tell us a little bit more about what that looks like that you are a newly mid to chief operating officer. And also, let's get into that relationships work. I feel like that's your middle name.
Matt Giovanniello:Let's get into that. Tell us about the importance of relationships and how you carry that out every day in the work that you do to support your districts.
Tiffany Law:Absolutely. So I'm so lucky to get to do what I do. I get up every day and I get to bridge a gap between our solution providers and our school districts. It's a dating game, and I get to be Chuck Woolery. I mean, it's the coolest job in the world.
Tiffany Law:Do y'all know who Chuck Woolery is? He was on this game show called The Dating Game, and he would go to commercial, he was the coolest guy. And he'd be like, we'll be back in two and two. And he was just a suave dude. You're gonna be like, I need to be just like him.
Tiffany Law:It's always been about relationships, and there's something missing. And we had to find a way to organically get in there and build that. But how do you do that? We all know that relationships are important, but you can't force those things. But what you can do is you can be authentic, and you can share with other people about authenticity.
Tiffany Law:And so often we see in our day to day passings that lack of authenticity, how much it affects that person, how it can very greatly affect kids. And when you come correct and you just are yourselves, I'm sure, Nish, you see as a teacher, you know, when you are yourself, those kiddos, man, they just respond so well to you. When you just bring yourself and you're like, you know what? I make mistakes and I laugh and I get over it. And we can all laugh at each of our mistakes.
Tiffany Law:It's the same way with our district leaders. It's the same way with our partners. Know, Maddie, when we met, I thought how amazing of a solution that he can solve something that so many people need. For so long, people have just been ripping their hair out. Now all of a sudden you made it look so easy and simply help everybody.
Tiffany Law:You took something that was so hard and for all types of folks and you made it accessible and you made it so that everybody now has a voice and every kiddo has the same opportunities. How cool is that?
Matt Giovanniello:So cool.
Tiffany Law:You get to live this life every single day. That is everything.
Matt Giovanniello:It's a bit of a pinch me moment. I do need to be reminded about that on the regular, and I think you're so good in helping all of us think about the impact that we have, Tiffany. I think what I'm also hearing from you is the humanizing element of this, And it's funny, as we were getting ready for this episode, Nisha and I were speaking about that quite extensively. And you have a front row seat to this every single day, not only with the ed tech solution providers like us that you interact with, but also on the membership side of the at IEI, the district leaders and their colleagues that you're supporting, and all of the teachers that they support. I think that's something that I wasn't all too familiar with before I entered this space, that I think for a lot of people who aren't in that front row seat, it's hard to relate to it, it's hard to see it, it's hard to identify, and it's hard to live that.
Matt Giovanniello:And so I'd love to dive into that a little bit. What are the pieces to administration leadership, ed tech leadership, your level of leadership that people just aren't seeing on a regular basis that you think is important for them to see? Like, what are you constantly exposed to that you are shouting from the rooftops? We need to better support our leaders so we could better support ours.
Tiffany Law:I think that there's some significantly different levels of this. To varying levels, We see how hard it is for district leaders. They try very hard to be perfect, but they make mistakes as much as any one of us. But they want to be as perfect as they can for our kiddos, but they look to the partners and solution providers to help them make really great decisions to be able to invest back into the community and share with the parents and the kiddos. There's nothing that they like more than when something works really well and they can say, look at what was able to happen or a teacher that comes back through the door that says, we brought this in and here's a result.
Tiffany Law:And this child is excelling because or watch what happened. And this was the start and this is the result. You know, we don't often see what they take home and how heavy it weighs because it does. The pandemic, I know everybody wants to get so far past it, but there's a human side of it that I don't ever wanna leave behind because it taught me so much about that side of a district leader as a parent and as a friend, what they were willing to do and how far they were willing to go for kids. I think we all, especially as kids growing up, we saw the superintendent as the big, bad, scary person.
Tiffany Law:They're really giving everything to be there for you, and they just want to do everything they can to make sure you're getting the best education and then working through their cabinet as well. And that's the great thing. And that's something that a lot of times people don't see is the cabinet that sits behind that district leader. That's really important. Those assistant soups and the directors of curriculum and so many people that are right there that are also supporting that folks don't see.
Tiffany Law:That it it's a huge human side to that. The teachers that are supporting the folks that are also buying into what you're doing, and the leaders are built among them. A lot of times, just like with my own father, you pick. You see someone. You see that star that's shining, and you say, that's that's our guy.
Tiffany Law:That's our girl. And that's what my father did. That's what happened to me as a leader. I've done it myself with my team. You see that something, you go, they got it.
Tiffany Law:And so with our partners and solution providers, a lot of times, I think we see them raising funds. We see only certain things, but what we don't see is the human side. We don't see the fight. We don't see how hard our partners are working to put solutions in front of kids. That is something that I try very hard to bring to light because it's a battle, I think.
Tiffany Law:And you do see a finalized product, and it's all pretty with a bow, but it's not always like that. There's a lot of hours and a lot of days. And I know there have been times that I've talked to you at one or two in the morning and you are just knee deep trying to trudge through to make sure that a district has a perfect product. Because it means the world to you. And nobody sees that.
Tiffany Law:Nobody sees what goes into grants and you know, how much effort is put behind that. And these are the leaders. It's the silent leader that has to be so loud on the other side, but the silence that has to go into all of that work. And I think that to every side of it, to my side, to the district side, and the partnership side, there's the silent leadership that has to speak loudly on the other end. But all of them, when you put them in a room together, they really do speak the same language.
Tiffany Law:Sometimes you just have to hear it, but you gotta be listening. It's like pre K all over again. You gotta open your ears. We all stop listening to each other at some point, but when you really open them, you start hearing each other again. It's basics.
Nisha Srinivasa:I couldn't agree with you more and, continue to be in awe as I'm listening to you share the way that you've really center humanity, even at such a grand scale of the work that you do in building strategic partnerships, and connecting really large scale districts to companies. It's amazing to me that your vision really is so human centered. And I really particularly resonated with the point that you brought up on the sort of hidden experiences and the things that we don't see on a day to day basis. How do you, your day to day work, specifically work to elevate the things that are unseen and kind of lift up those voices and experiences and bridge that connection?
Tiffany Law:It can be a tough thing to do because especially in an environment where you really want to focus on what a partner's bringing versus what a partner's done. Really want to focus on the finalized product. And so you hope that the the district leader's going to hear and you have to really be able to trust that you have their ears and be putting in the time in the relationship. Again, it really does go back to building that relationship. It's never going to be a one off situation.
Tiffany Law:No partnership is built on one date. You spend time together. You have to learn each other. You have to build a trust. Whatever form that is, you've got to trust each other, especially when you're looking at a district leader and a solution provider.
Tiffany Law:That district is putting a lot of trust in that solution provider to bring their solution into a classroom. And so they have to learn about that solution. And in doing so, they need to be able to trust that they're bringing in a solid long term sustainable solution that is going to be able to help kids and that the person behind that is gonna be there to maintain that solution. There's going to be things that change over time and that the people behind it are going to change with it. So it's gotta be a solid foundation with building blocks.
Matt Giovanniello:I think those are a couple of really key points that if you're not entrenched in this space, Tiffany, it's easy to not pick up on, or once you know it, easy to forget. The notion that successful ed tech partnerships with school districts can sometimes take months or years or longer. If those relationships are built on solid foundations and those partnerships do formalize and they start and they're successful, they will be blossoming for years and years and years. The necessity of building a strong foundation for these partnerships is extremely important, not only to secure the partnership, but also to have that blossom for many years into the future in support of students. I think that whether you're thinking about it from the ed tech side of trying to strike a quick win, or an investor side of like, How do I get outsized returns fast?
Matt Giovanniello:This is not your traditional model. Yet it's extremely successful, super sticky, and really valuable, not even altruistically, but just for building enduring companies. I'm glad that you called all the things out because I don't think they're innate and they should be.
Tiffany Law:Sometimes you have to take a step back and look at things from a different angle to really see what they look like. A small district today doesn't mean that it's not gonna be a council district tomorrow. You gotta pay attention. Work with the person, not the size of the district. You just need to build relationships because they build on each other, and they continue to grow every time.
Matt Giovanniello:I think that's also the beauty of organizations and communities like IEI for district leaders because you don't turn away small districts, or similarly, you don't turn away big districts simply because you think they're big enough and they can stand on their own due heat. Everyone has needs, and it's amazing to be a part of these communities in these in person retreats and conferences at IEI in partnership with you all and meet district leaders from every walk of life. Tell us a little bit more about the nature of IEI events, the newer programming that you're doing to support newer stage companies, district leaders who are trying to rise through the ranks, and other ways that you're supporting those who need it the most, which are the ones who are selflessly leading these districts?
Tiffany Law:I think it's important that everybody has a place to be. There's lots of things out there, but, you know, everybody needs family. And without that, you can't grow. You've got to put down roots to be able to grow. You need support.
Tiffany Law:District leaders need support. Solution providers need support. You get that when you have a place where you can put down your guard and say, need a little help. I'm struggling with this, or I just did this really great thing. Let me share it with you.
Tiffany Law:It might be another rural district. It might be a huge suburban district. You never know when you're gonna learn something. You may learn something from a district leader and vice versa. You just never know because you're sharing the space.
Tiffany Law:And when everybody shares a space and you're breaking bread and having one on one meetings with folks, it's a different level of understanding and you're taking days. You're not auctioning stuff off at a booth. You're not jumping into an aisle, hoping that you're gonna capture thirty seconds of someone's time. All goes back to spending time with people. Sit with people.
Tiffany Law:Get to know them. Learn about their humans. Who's at home? What do you do? Where'd you go to school?
Tiffany Law:What are you about? What do you like to do? Do you garden? Why did you start? What broke your heart?
Tiffany Law:What pissed you off? What brought you to this room? When you learn those things, you learn a lot about somebody, and that fills a space very quickly. Those stories build chapters and chapters build novels. Every time you build one of those, it goes on to the next one and they just continue to build sagas.
Tiffany Law:That's how it goes. Our partners grow every time and our district leaders are able to gain knowledge from each other. They're able to be able to get some PD from our events where they can be rejuvenated. They can get what they need as leaders. I've learned so much from our events.
Tiffany Law:I never realized that I was going to do that. I'm caught off guard every time. I'm so excited for what we have coming up in the next couple of events. It's amazing. I didn't expect to be, but I am.
Tiffany Law:Startup companies have an opportunity to share what they're doing with sitting district leaders. Where do they get that? There's nowhere else that you can do that. They get an opportunity to pitch their solutions to sitting district leaders and have feedback next summer. It's a no brainer.
Tiffany Law:I know somebody sitting on this call it worked pretty well for. It's it's all about understanding the system and understanding the best ways to work together and create relationships and bonds and grow from them.
Matt Giovanniello:Tiffany, I love your analogies. They're so visual. They're so on point. And I'm a little sad that we're at the end of our time because one more question for you, and that just means we need to take them apart too because we have so many more topics to explore, dig into just the service that you're scratching of supports for startups, supports on PD for district leaders, and all of the other salient points that you brought up. I have one more question for you that we ask all of our guests.
Matt Giovanniello:Can take a moment to reflect on it if you like. Question to you is what does being an exceptional educator and being an exceptional leader mean to you?
Tiffany Law:It's a two part answer. An exceptional educator gives everything. I learned it from my own parents. I watched them give everything. It's a gift.
Tiffany Law:It's a calling, and it's a blessing. And we are so lucky for every educator who heard that calling. Every single one who doesn't care about the hours, pay, or the amount of time they are teachers putting up a bulletin board, or a district leader working or the assistant principal this year who drove my kid in driver's ed. Those are exceptional humans. They're also leaders because they teach all of us.
Tiffany Law:They teach me every day. An exceptional leader brings all of us along. We all find them in ourselves and in each other. I think leaders attract each other and build each other up. You have to reach out and find your tribe.
Tiffany Law:If you see a leader stumbling, put out your hand and help each other. We all have to do that.
Matt Giovanniello:I I love that. Nisha, taking pause at thinking about that, Tiffany, not only because you are one of my personal all time best examples of not only practicing what you preach, but instilling that in others too, Tiffany, because you do all of those things and then some. But you support exceptional leaders. You are one yourself. You watch your exceptional leaders build exceptional students who turn into exceptional leaders.
Matt Giovanniello:It is a full circle operation, and you are at the center of it. It was just fantastic to reflect with you today, Tiffany. We talk all the time, but to do it in this forum was extra exciting. As we wrap up, we will schedule part two for sure. Anisha, thank you for joining us today, posing questions and reflection.
Matt Giovanniello:Tiffany, thank you for lending your insights. It is one of the most unique ones I've heard of just from the position that you stand and your own experiences coming from education and a crazy world that led up to it. Until then, thank you all for listening to today's episode. We will catch you on the next episode of the Exceptional Educators podcast soon.
Nisha Srinivasa:Thank you so much, Tiffany. I think from my stance, currently as an educator, I was just so refreshed to hear somebody that is doing the work that you do center the human experience so deeply. Matt and I were were literally just talking about that right before we got started with our chat today. Thank you so much for what you do and for keeping the folks that you serve and work with at the center and seeing them for all they do and all they bring.
Tiffany Law:Thank you. Thank you guys for having me so much.
