Beyond Sixth LLC

We at Beyond Sixth LLC believe in staying current with what's happening in our field and the sectors we serve to ensure we provide support that is relevant to today's context. We gained a lot of new insights at the Education Leaders of Color Convening in Baltimore, MD this week. We truly enjoyed reconnecting with friends and making new connections with talented educators and practioners doing outstanding work. It was so nice to kick off the events with a performance by The Combined Band Programs: Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and Western High School, reminding of us why we do this work.

We want to send a Big Congratulations to Marisa Parrella for launching the inaugural cohort of The MOMENTUM Residency!!!! We had the privilege of providing program development services for The MOMENTUM Residency, a 2-year residency program focused on building the capacity of school mental health practitioners. Let's Go!!!!

The Rewind: The year was 2020. We achieved our first year in business and shortly after - the pandemic hit. We were in unfamiliar territory worldwide - trying to figure out next steps to take with a very uncertain future ahead. New lessons were learned and old ones reinforced. A value reinforced for us was #flexibility. Flexibility is a core component of our work across all facets - flexible mindsets, behaviors, ideas, processes, people and more. It allows us to pivot when needed and keeps the door open for creativity, brilliance, success and sustainability. As talks of a pending recession re-emerge, some organizations are turning to workforce reductions to preempt what they think "may" come. Now is a great time to exercise flexible thinking. How might your organization shift to better position you going forward, even in a potential economic downturn?

The Rewind: Transitioning to the growth phase can be both a stressful and exciting time for your organization. Some of the services we provide growing clients include capacity assessments, organizational structure design/redesign and process improvement work. We had the honor of doing such work with Elmwood Village Charter Schools in Buffalo, NY, in 2019. They had added a second campus and wanted support thinking about their organizational design and operations as they expanded. Ultimately, we delivered a new organizational structure, clear role descriptions and a robust set of recommendations to guide their next steps operationally. Fast forward to 2023 and their Director of Operations, Liz Evans reached out to me again and shared the impact of our work together. The EVCS team did the hardwork to implement the recommendations and were thinking about their next steps in this ever changing environment. It brought a smile to my face to hear how our work together produced positive outcomes and to know that they thought of us again!

The Rewind: 5 years ago we had the privilege of supporting Odell Education as our first client with launching their online high school curriculum literacy program. It was awesome to be apart of a team doing such great work and to tangibly see the impact of our services. Fast forward and we are working with them again. Thank you for choosing us to partner with you again! Check them out at https://lnkd.in/eRp2PcKq #impactwork #projectmanagement #processdesign #operationaleffectivness #5years

One of my greatest challenges is singing my own praises. I've always believed that if I work hard, the recognition will come. Experience has taught me otherwise. It is just as important that we recognize our work as it is for others to do so. 2024 marks our fifth year in business - quite an accomplishment! We've had the opportunity to do some truly impactful work with outstanding organizations and colleagues. I look forward to reflecting and sharing some of that work as we celebrate 5 years!