WestEd is mourning with profound sadness the passing of Sylvie Hale. It is not an exaggeration to say that Sylvie helped build the WestEd we know today. She started working at Far West Laboratory in 1988 as a program assistant in the Students At-Risk Program and most recently served as WestEd’s lead for intra-agency partnerships. Throughout her long career, she wore many hats and worked in many content areas, with the concept of bridging running through them all.
Over the past 33 years, Sylvie has worked with numerous teams, forging strong relationships everywhere she turned. She has been a key technical assistance leader — from early school improvement projects through decades of work in the Comprehensive Center system, as well as working with charter schools and with REL West, connecting practitioners with research. Sylvie also engaged deeply with our technology team on web-based and multimedia technology products. Most recently, she was leading a signature workforce development project in the San Diego region that bridges high school, college, and workforce communities. She was also leading a cross-agency team making connections across state and district projects in New Mexico. As part of our Institutional Development team, she also led many successful strategic cross-agency proposals.
In the course of her career, Sylvie developed highly prized skills in strategic planning and facilitation and became a WestEd go-to resource for teams that needed to crystallize their direction, build relationships, and strengthen their plans and operational processes. Referring to Sylvie’s contributions to a recent programmatic reorganization within WestEd, Neal Finkelstein said her “help was incredible in thinking through how our teams can learn from each other, interact, overlap and how that evolves into innovations that can support the field. Sylvie was so committed not only to what we do, but to how we come together to get the work done.”
Sylvie always kept WestEd’s mission at the center of her work. It is telling that when, in a recent WestEd staff spotlight, she was asked what she would do if she won the lottery, Sylvie replied that she’d “start a foundation to support projects focused on improving outcomes for youth in foster care.”
We will all miss Sylvie’s professional contributions, but it is her personal warmth, collaboration, and caring that we are truly mourning. Catherine Walcott noted that “Sylvie was one of those people who makes coming to work every day worth it. I could always count on her to seize a challenge. She had such faith in WestEd’s ability to get the right expertise where it was needed, and she did so with a calm confidence and ready laugh that made us all rise to the challenge. I also loved her humorous and heartfelt perspective on the joys of being a parent, wife, and friend, and I will miss her tremendously.”
Over her years at WestEd, Sylvie touched many of us. She was already a mainstay of WestEd when I arrived in San Francisco. It did not take me long to become a fan, impressed by her talent and commitment to WestEd, its mission, and her colleagues.
If I had to define Sylvie in only one way — which does not do her justice — it is that she got things done. Her sleeves were perpetually rolled up to move forward with whatever the challenge. Typically, she checked her ego at the door. Equally typically, she wore a big smile and laughed often. She was a collaborator. She cared about having impact, of serving the needs of clients (both internal and external), and in making a difference.
Sylvie is survived by her husband, Dean Hale, who also worked at WestEd in our IT Department from 2000 to 2008, and their two children. We send them our heartfelt condolences.
In sadness,
Glen Harvey, WestEd CEO