FACULTY
LISA ARRASTIA, PHD
In all of LISA’S work, she designs creative educational spaces rooted in a love pedagogy™, an approach that centers inquiry, imagination, and the human need for connection. Her work helps people make sense of the layered complexities of self, other, and difference through practices that deepen understanding. Originally from West Harlem, she has served as a school leader and teacher in New York, Massachusetts, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago. She holds a PhD in American Studies, an MEd in Administration and Supervision, an MA in Education, and a BS in Black Studies and Writing.
Lisa’s focus includes audioethnography, an aesthetic and educational practice she developed that brings together oral history interviewing, listening across difference, and digital remix to examine how place, social life, and personal experience shape the ways people understand one another. Her scholarship explores the cultural forces that influence connection, disconnection, and the narratives people shape about themselves and their communities.
Available to provide one-to-one coaching for young people and adults working on creative nonfiction, course essays, and college applications, Lisa is a Kweli Journal fellow and is working on an autofiction book exploring memory, race, and geography, as well as the nonfiction work Love Pedagogy: A Curriculum for Liberation.
Founder
BETYE ARRASTIA-NOWAK
Critical Visual Studies | Audioethnography
BETYE is the Special Events & Membership Manager at Albany Institute of History & Art in New York. She holds an MEd and a BA in Critical and Visual Studies from Pratt Institute, with minors in psychology and morphology. An alumna of Kite’s Nest and Inspiring Girls Expeditions, Betye’s work is rooted in deep engagement with art and inquiry, a belief in peace, and the stories communities tell about themselves. She has worked with the Audre Lorde Project and the Public Theater’s Public Works program, co-facilitated Writing and Critical Inquiry at the University at Albany, and her writing is published in Our Voices Our Stories (Simon & Schuster) and HERE: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press).
Betye has also performed her poetry on gender politics and racial constructions at spaces such as the Nuyorican Poets Café and Omega Institute’s Seeds of Change conference.
JAMAL AHAMAD
JAMAL is a licensed English teacher for grades 5–12 in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and an assistant principal at Pittsfield High School. He grew up in Brooklyn and holds a BA in English Literature and an MEd. While teaching at Taconic High School, he created the school’s first Black Studies course. He also teaches at Berkshire Dance Theatre and the Olga Dunn Dance Company and directs Ahamad Multimedia, where he produces films, interviews, dance works, and reviews of socially engaged YA literature.
An aesthetics-based educator, Jamal works through writing, movement, and other art forms. With a student-centered pedagogy that teaches across difference, he facilitates with humor, compassion, critical insight, and a deep love for the life of the child.
Teaching | YA Lit
A|A
The imagery and videos of A|A, ALBERTO, serve as the inspiration for the Ed Factory’s Pocket Films. Alberto has a BA in Globalization from the University at Albany, State University of New York, with a minor in Business.
He works in fashion photography and commercial video in Los Angeles, California. Alberto uses his work in U.S. popular culture as a platform to bring the entertainment industry's issues of equity and access to the forefront. Currently, Alberto is the Creative Coordinator at DZL Consulting, a creative advertising agency that “strives to look at everything through a socially conscious lens and act with integrity, both internally and externally.”
Alberto has been working with the Ed Factory since 2014 and continues to serve as its sole visual and creative media director.
Photography | Film
ANDREW BILEZIKIAN
ANDREW earned a BA from the University at Albany, State University of New York, with a dual concentration in marketing and business information technology management. Andre has been the Ed Factory’s and Young People’s Archive sound engineer since 2017. He creates soundscapes using deep listening. Also an industrial designer, Andrew writes music for the Ed Factory dedicated to helping the public listen across difference in an effort to deepen understanding.
Sound Production
MICHAEL CARLEY
MICHAEL is an author and consultant whose work spans education, theatre, and disability advocacy. Currently leading New York University's Connections autism program, Michael is a former United Nations Representative for Veterans for Peace. He directed the internationally recognized Iraq Water Project and, before that, wrote and directed plays in New York. He serves on several advisory boards, including Drexel University’s Autism Research Initiative and the Spectrum Theatre Ensemble. With degrees from Hampshire College and Columbia University, he is the founding director of GRASP, the largest global organization for adults on the autism spectrum, and has shared his perspective at more than 100 universities, hospitals, and conferences. His leadership includes directing the Asperger Syndrome Training + Employment Partnership (now Integrate), consulting for New York City Public Schools, and leading NYU’s Connections ASD Program across its global sites.
Michael has addressed the U.S. Congress and the United Nations and written for major national and international outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Psychology Today, and HuffPost, where he published the column Autism Without Fear. His books and articles on autism, employment, education, and narrative appear widely, including Asperger’s From the Inside Out, Unemployed on the Autism Spectrum, and The Book of Happy, Positive, and Confident Sex for Adults on the Autism Spectrum. Diagnosed in 2000 and again under the DSM-5 in 2014, Michael writes and consults from lived and professional experiences.
Neurodiversity
MORGAN FIERST, MED
MORGAN is the winner of a Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching, and an alumna of the Ed Factory's Teachers Institute. She was part of the Teacher’s Institute's inaugural cohort in Minneapolis in 2011. Morgan has a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MA in Education from Hamline University.
She currently teaches at South High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Morgan is dedicated to building mathematics communities in which students understand how mathematical ideas, formulas, and relationships can help them investigate, interpret, and engage with the social, economic, and political conditions of their lives, their communities, the country, and the larger world.
Morgan is an advocate for social change and encourages students to use a critical lens at all times; she remains a national leader in developing culturally relevant mathematics curricula. As an active teacher and former Ed Factory Teachers Institute fellow, Morgan brings to the mentor role a deep understanding of the difficult daily impact of current education reforms on teachers and their students.
Teaching | Secondary Mathematics
TANYA HODGE, MED
Teaching | English + English Language Learning
TANYA, a 2014 Ed Factory Teachers Institute fellow, holds a BA in English and an MEd from the University of Minnesota. She taught English at South High School in Minneapolis for 22 years and now teaches English 11 and 12, AP Literature, and AP Language at MPS Online School. Across all her roles, she is committed to practicing the Ed Factory’s love pedagogy™. Tanya has coordinated the AVID Program and taught in an integrated Humanities, American Studies, ELA, and EL classroom where roughly half of her students were multilingual. She has served on a national English panel for the National Center on Education and the Economy, been an International Leaders in Education Program fellow in Kuala Lumpur, and taught AP demonstration lessons and led professional development for the Department of English at Beijing Royal School.
MAHNOOR NASIR, MPH
MAHNOOR joined the Young People’s Archive as a classroom facilitator in 2017. She holds a Master of Public Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She graduated from the University at Albany in with a B.S. in Public Health and Human Biology and a minor in English.
Mahnoor’s interests lie at the intersection of social justice and maternal and child health, and she hopes to plan and implement public health programs and policies that begin to close disparities in health outcomes across race and class in the United States and abroad. Mahnoor also enjoys teaching and engaging in provocative discussions with peers and students alike.
Teaching | Public Health
POOJA PATEL, MED
Originally from New Jersey, POOJA is a learning specialist who teaches at Dwight-Englewood and is a former longtime English and humanities teacher at the United Nations International School in New York City. Pooja earned her MA in the Reading Specialist program at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is currently an adjunct instructor. She serves as a middle school English teacher at Dwight-Englewood School in New Jersey.
Pooja has worked in both public and private schools, using a variety of systematic, explicit instructional methods to build literacy and critical thinking skills. She is the author with Leslie Laud of Using Formative Assessment to Differentiate Middle School Literacy Instruction (Corwin, 2012). Pooja has gained national and international recognition for her action research in literacy, flipped classrooms, and formative assessment. She is the founder and director of Teachers 4 Student Success, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving literacy skills for all individuals, regardless of socioeconomic status.
Teaching | Learning Specialist
RACHEL VATELIA, JD
Teaching | Human Rights + International Governance
With a foundation in human rights and legal advocacy, RACHEL’S career is dedicated to navigating the complex interplay between identity, law, and international governance. A graduate of Boston College Law School and a Fulbright Scholar, Rachel co-founded Vatelia’s Foundation as a teen. The organization is committed to driving positive change through humanitarian projects. Their initiatives focus on education, food security, and entrepreneurship in developing regions, showcasing Rachel’s dedication to applying legal and organizational expertise to achieve meaningful global impact.
A longtime facilitator of audioethnography for The Ed Factory, Rachel is a skillful facilitator, creative thinker, and a career characterized by a proactive approach to legal challenges and a commitment to solving problems effectively.
REBECCA RINGER, MED
Born and raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, REBECCA is a graduate of Smith College’s Ada Comstock Scholars program, where she earned a BA in American Studies, with a focus on access and equity in American institutions. She also holds an MEd and earned an AA in Liberal Arts for Education from Berkshire Community College. Rebecca is an advisor and instructor at the William Stickney Pittsfield Adult Learning Center and serves as the Educational Advisor for the Berkshire County branch of MassEdCO’s Educational Opportunity Center, one of Massachusetts’s largest community-based education networks. She is also a member of the Berkshire County Youth Council.
A writer and audioethnographer, Rebecca has been a facilitator with The Ed Factory since 2021.
Teaching | Adult Learning Specialist
GINA VOSKOV, MFA
Teaching | Human Rights + International Governance
Originally from rural Vermont, GINA is a middle school English teacher at United Nations International School in New York City. She has taught at the high school and middle school levels in classrooms at both public and private institutions in the United States and Brazil. A participant in the Folger Shakespeare Library's Teaching Shakespeare Institute in Washington, DC, and a founding member of the Folger Library's National Teacher Corps.
A member of Macondo, Gina holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from NYU, a BA in Creative and Professional Writing, and an MAT in Secondary English from Brown University. She serves as the Board Secretary for the not-for-profit Teachers 4 Student Success. Gina can teach and support writers from early teens to adults.
KEVIN TOLEDO, MED
Originally from the Bronx, New York, KEVIN taught for 15 years in public elementary and middle schools in New York City. He is a graduate of Bank Street College of Education in New York City, where he received his MA in Mathematics Leadership. He is a retired assistant middle school principal and mathematics and science teacher from the United Nations International School in New York City.
Kevin, along with his wife, Rose, founded Sprouted Root Kitchen, a 100% organic plant-based kitchen.
Teaching | Middle School Mathematics
A SHARED INTELLECTUAL & PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE.
The Ed Factory changes how difference is understood and addresses real-world problems by creating democratic learning spaces grounded in meaningful relationships and inventive educational approaches. Our work is led by creative educators who bring both deep classroom knowledge and expertise in their fields.
Our faculty are joined by a network of scholars, artists, and cultural workers—locally, nationally, and globally—who enrich our efforts, especially through our Teachers Institute. If you’re an educator, find out how to join our faculty.