Nicole Williams Browning is a School and District Improvement Senior Facilitator with 25 years of service to public education. She has worked in an educational nonprofit, charter management organizations, traditional K-12 districts, community colleges, and both private and public universities.
Before joining WestEd, she served as an Area Superintendent for three Bay Area counties where she supervised a network of schools from transitional kindergarten through twelfth grade. In this role, she was responsible for the instructional program, school safety, social-emotional and academic outcomes, charter renewal, community engagement and partnerships, school health and vitality, and both regional and principal professional development.
The support and direction she provided included targeted coaching and intervention support to individual principals, outside partners, and district staff to ensure principals received strategic leadership coaching. Creating the conditions in which children and educators thrive is Nicole’s heart work and is her sustaining “why” as an educator for the last 25 years.
Williams Browning also served as a principal and teacher at both the elementary and middle school levels, earning two California Distinguished School Awards, and an Award of Distinction while she served as an Area Superintendent. Her specific background is in executive and leadership coaching, methods, and instructional practices that significantly narrow the achievement gap in public schools.
She holds a BA in psychology from UC Berkeley, two MA degrees in literature and educational leadership from California State University, East Bay (formerly, California State University, Hayward), and a doctorate in educational leadership from Saint Mary’s College of California.