Thought Leader. Education Architect. Innovator.
Educated at Columbia University, Gerri Burton has had an extensive career in every aspect of Education and Change Management. As an undergraduate student at Barnard College, Columbia University, she served in the NYC College Bound Program as a mentor for at-risk students and a pre-K Montessori teacher’s aide. As a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University, she taught middle school English at JHS 123 in the South Bronx. Teaching was followed by a highly successful Director/VP-level corporate training and change management career with American Express, where she served on the Platinum Card product launch team, PepsiCo, where she designed and delivered IT transformation training, Clinique, where she introduced computer-based sales, product and customer service training and training impact was measured directly by sales launch results, and the globally recognized London Treasury of Chemical Bank/JP Morgan Chase where she developed breakthrough training strategies to recruit, retain and train traders and corporate bankers in the wake of a large-scale human capital raid by a competitor bank. Also at Chase, Gerri redesigned the global onboarding strategy for the Investment Bank and designed and executed a change management strategy to merge the cultures of the Treasury and Investment Banking organizations enabling a new set of offerings for wholesale clients.
The experience at Chase led to Gerri’s first entrepreneurial effort, New Learning Developments (NLD) Inc., where she led the combination of innovative learning strategies with new technologies to onboard and train traders globally in the context of managing change and creating risk management banking cultures. NLD was an early experimenter with e-learning, graphics, 3-d animation, multi-lingual audio tracks, mock portfolio trading, virtual learning/gaming simulations, competency based learning, interactive continuous assessment, personalized training, blended solutions, training outsourcing, business-driven and custom LMS reporting. NLD provided the first complete virtual Treasury Risk Management curriculum to be published by Euromoney. NLD Treasury Risk Management programs were distributed via Euromoney to ninety countries. NLD customers included Chase, Goldman Sachs, ABN AMRO, CIBC, NY Federal Reserve Bank, IBM Risk Management, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, State Street, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, et al. For content creation, NLD partnered with the faculties of Insead, London School of Economics, NYU, Northeastern, Columbia U and ITT. NLD programs were incorporated into higher education curriculums at IIT and Northeastern.
Gerri also lead and personally served a strategy arm of NLD which transformed organizations through change management expertise applied to mergers and acquisitions, technology adoption and stakeholder engagement. Examples included CIBC where Gerri designed a high level Board and Customer Education Center for risk management education. Also at CIBC, Gerri created a risk management culture, led by the CEO, throughout the wholesale and retail banking organizations. At ABN AMRO, Gerri redesigned global talent recruiting and onboarding to ensure top talent acquisition from top tier Graduate Business Schools. At Swiss Bank Corporation, Gerri designed and executed a human resource capitalization strategy bank-wide. At CIBC, Gerri executed a change management strategy designing trading simulations to train traders to trade in anticipatory markets providing the Bank with insight as to which traders would succeed when markets switched from bear to bull and vice versa. At Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Gerri designed simulations to teach second generation wealth customers about market performance as a customer retention strategy. NLD partnered with Dusseldorf-based GFTA to re-program twenty-five years of Reuters data patterning Euro performance prior to its launch identifying predictive models and corollary training requirements to enable Treasuries to maximize Euro trading and hedge Euro risk from Day One. NLD maintained offices in New York, London, Toronto, Hong Kong, Chicago and Dusseldorf.
Following the sale of NLD, Gerri created New Learning Ventures (NLV) LLC, dedicated to bringing the same innovative thinking that drove NLD to education and healthcare for developed and developing nations. As Managing Principal of NLV, Gerri has consulted with The World Bank, World Health Organization, and US AID. Through engagement with the Consortium for Worker Education, Gerri led a team which re-designed traditional union/non-union training to include distance learning and other non-classroom based approaches helping the US fill a nationwide shortage of nurses. Gerri created seamless learning experiences that enabled recruitment of nurses, identification of areas of specialization, efficient higher education degree attainment and higher rates of continuing professional certification. NLV corporate training and change management clients include Abbott Labs, GSK, Eli Lilly, ACS, Deutschebank, Goldman Sachs, Oracle, TRG, MICOR, Xerox, etc.
Serving the transformation of global education systems, Gerri has built NLV’s philosophy to serve and inform a seamless approach to lifelong learning with a practice based on scalable design, innovation, transformative results, societal-scale advancement and sustainable change. Combining her change management expertise and education sector knowledge, Gerri addresses the nexus between learning segments (preK-read to learn/learn to read; high school to higher education) and cross-sector alignment (education and healthcare, economic development, talent realization, social-emotional wellness, lifelong student agency).
Gerri has built a carefully curated network of thought leaders so that NLV can provide on demand teams of high level education experts for consultation, advisory and design solutions. (Advisors include Governor of Massachusetts Jane Swift who first introduced TIMMS and PISA to the state; Christopher Lohse of Harvard Education, CCSSO, Pearson and Renaissance Learning who addresses the role of Teacher as Master Learner; Dr. Devin Vodicka, Chief Impact Officer of AltSchool and former Superintendent of Vista Unified; etc.)
At Gerri’s direction, NLV created the NLV Innovation Lab, a nimble team to experiment with new data-driven teaching/learning concepts remaining committed to the cutting-edge legacy of NLD. The Lab is headed by Siva Sirish Modruga who holds certifications in app design, cloud services and big data analytics.
NLV strategic research partners include Xerox PARC, with whom Gerri was engaged to consult on personal learning systems and analytics for four years, Oracle Education IBU UK, with whom Gerri partnered on personal learning for five years, and CPP Innovation Labs.
Gerri maintains close relations with her alma mater providing NLV with thought and execution partners including Columbia University: Edlab, Teachers College and the Athena Center for Women’s Leadership, Barnard College.
Gerri maintains relationships with NLV implementation partners include the International Foundation for Coaches, Project Red and the One-to-One Institute.
Current NLV education innovation initiatives, under Gerri’s direction, include Education Continuous Improvement Ecosystems, Personal Learning 2.0, New Education Models, Talent Cities, Student Agency/Lifelong Agency, P-3 Bridges, and School Branding/ School Choice. Gerri recently designed and NLV recently launched a new leadership development series addressing the Principal as Change-Agent which addresses changing levels of autonomy within an education system. At the Ministry-level, Gerri designed and NLV offers Leadership, Vision and Change as the first step in a transformation change management initiative. For teachers, Gerri designed and NLV offers Transformation Triangle, transformational pedagogy teaching workshops and coaching which complement traditional teacher preparation addressing the role of innovation to maximize personal learning and increase parental engagement.
Gerri regularly consults with ministries of education and school districts regarding strategies for education transformation. Gerri focuses on motivation and engagement among teachers/aides, students, employers and parents, seeking a balanced, fully aligned education continuous improvement ecosystem among all stakeholders. Gerri serves as an executive coach across education ministries, cabinets and boards encouraging alignment from a shared vision. Gerri uses change management practices to enable the branding and marketing of schools and education systems defining the intentionality of education practices and how they can best be communicated to stakeholder audiences. This approach creates a balance among private and public schools within a nation as well as greater parental engagement. Gerri consults regarding expanded parent education.
Gerri is committed to the expansion of education systems supporting lifelong talent realization. Initiating at pre-K, Gerri partners with the National Center for Montessori Public Education and the Education Synergy Alliance to design new models of early education including the P-3 Bridge. Gerri designs workforce development programs in conjunction with regional economic development councils, post-secondary institutions, entrepreneurs and employers. Working with organizations such as the Consortium for Worker Education, Jobs for the Future, US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the American Association of Community Colleges, and the San Diego Workforce Partnership, Gerri designs programs, activities and curricula to promote dialogue, entrepreneurism, maker spaces, STEM, and focus on national economic development. Gerri also liaises with the Oracle Academy, Cisco Academy and Qualcomm Think-a-bit Labs.
Gerri assists clients with fund-raising, grants and venture capital. Gerri liaised with US Education Deputy Secretary Jim Shelton to encourage corporate and venture capital participation in the US ED i3 Initiative. Gerri recently joined client, Vista Unified, and partner, Digital Promise, on stage in Washington DC to accept the coveted XQ Prize, a five-year grant dedicated to school re-imagination. The award was funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, Apple. The grant provides for expansion of personal learning academies, personal learning systems, new forms of credentialing, personal scheduling, re-designed vocational education, collaborative space design and challenge-based learning aligned with the UN Sustainability Goals.
Gerri is a lead designer of the new University of California at San Diego/Vista Unified School District International Research and Practice Center which focuses on dedicated neuroscience research and efficacy to directly informs teaching practices and benefits students lives. Gerri is a member of the VUSD Facilities Committee which seeks to redefine school space through the opening of new school facilities around modernization, best teaching and learning practices, teacher-student collaboration.
Gerri contributed to both the US ED National Education Technology Plan (2010) and the US Vice President’s Report on Job Skills (2014). She has contributed to round-table discussions with President George Bush and the NYC Chancellor of Education on the changing role of education in American cities including training for education leadership. Gerri has served Mrs. Laura Bush organizing leadership training for the Bush Institute Women’s Initiative, an initiative dedicated to building leaders in the MENA region. In addition to the OECD, Gerri has presented at the Aspen Institute, the US Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Oracle Open World, Dallas Community College, University of Oklahoma, University of Trinidad-Tobago, etc. Recently, Gerri participated in a panel with representatives of Qualcomm and Google to discuss world-of-work training initiatives at the K12 level including STEM design. Gerri serves on the Education and Workforce Development Committee of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce.
Gerri has a dedicated interest in the education systems of the Middle East and North Africa. Since 2016, Gerri has provided workshops and speaking engagements in Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain – most recently at GEFT 2017. Gerri has also served the Jordan Education Initiative. In December 2016, Gerri presented at the Software Industry Information Association (SIIA) introducing education issues surrounding Syrian refugees.
