Meet the Team

David Bailis, Senior Director of Operations, oversees the day-to-day operations of the division. Dave has years of experience creating content and managing service providers for a number of publishing companies. He has held leadership roles at National Geographic, Symmetry Creative Production, and Tighe Publishing. Before moving into his current role, Dave was Westchester’s Content Director for STEM. This interview shares more about Dave's extensive background in education.
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Jennifer Cole, Content Director of Literacy, Humanities, and Languages, comes to Westchester Education Services with more than twenty years of educational publishing experience. She has led teams to produce hundreds of thousands of hours of student and teacher content for learners at all grade levels. Her passions include children’s literature, language acquisition, and ensuring all students voices are represented in today’s educational products. Jennifer has worked both in-house at publishers such as Houghton Mifflin and Sundance, and for educational vendors including MPS and KGL. She is skilled at helping clients dream products become reality.
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Samantha Tucker, Senior Supervising Editor, Culturally Responsive Education & Social Studies, collaborates with freelance talent to critically assess educational materials for clients invested in culturally responsive education. Sam has taught all ages, pre-school through post-secondary English classes, and has designed curriculum and professional development courses for Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education in South Korea. Sam has dedicated herself to anti-racist pedagogy and policy, created community organizer training for Ohio Voice, and led writing workshops for historically marginalized writers and students. In November 2021, Sam was recognized as a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree for the work she and her team do in creating educational materials that are culturally responsive. Whether teaching or writing, Sam is focused on the development of culturally responsive communities to address the urgent need for representation, justice, and equity.
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Chris Herrfurth, Production Manager, manages production work for Westchester Education Services client projects. He leads resources in the U.S., as well as offshore teams in Chennai and Noida. Chris spent years on the production teams at Mazer and TSI and is adept at leveraging technology to streamline production workflows. Read more about Chris' experiences prior to joining Westchester in this blog post. This background enables Chris' team to implement complex workflows with precision, processing thousands of pages efficiently and accurately.
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Nilofer Ali, Resources Manager and DEI Committee Lead, is responsible for the recruiting, onboarding, and management of the freelance talent contracted for client projects. Additionally, she has implemented an internship program in coordination with colleges in the Dayton, Ohio area to increase awareness for students, particularly those from populations historically underrepresented in educational publishing, about the career opportunities available to them. Prior to joining Westchester Education Services, Nilofer worked as a teacher in private and public PreK-8 classrooms with diverse populations in urban, suburban, and virtual settings. You can read more about how Nilofer's teaching experiences inform her current role in this blog post.
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Kevin Schroeder, Director of Client Solutions, has over 14 years of experience working in the educational publishing industry, most recently at Hazelden Publishing and with It’s About Time, which is currently known as Activate Learning. Previously, he worked in the EdTech space with SMART Technologies, and is a former Social Studies classroom teacher with a degree in Social Studies Education and a minor in Athletic Coaching. Kevin's background in the market provides him with extensive knowledge to help clients develop solutions to ensure all students succeed.
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