Education is about people.

Chief Executive Officer & Founder

As an overly inquisitive kid, Susan’s quest for understanding and learning new things led to good grades coupled with consistent comments of, “she’s a delight to have in class but talks too much.” Undeterred, her curiosity never wavered as she pursued her undergraduate and graduate degrees in liberal arts before enrolling in law school. She used her “gift of gab” to persuade, argue, and defend topics of interest. She uses these same skills to learn about her clients and help them effectively communicate their mission.

Susan's prior experience in leading higher education administration and operations, along with her love of the law, helps clients navigate the often opaque and confusing accreditation and compliance landscape. She starts all client engagements by gaining a comprehensive understanding of every institution’s mission and strategic goals before presenting multiple options to achieve their ambitious ideas. Sometimes all that stands in the way between organizations and the students they seek to serve—are clearly communicated practices. Success rarely occurs alone. Susan leverages her knowledge to provide organizations with the tools they need to do the most good.

State Licensure & Special Projects

If child-generated energy could power a city, elementary school-aged Andy could have replaced every power plant in the United States. A constant asker of, “why?”—which his teachers both loved and found exhausting—Andy’s curiosity and outspokenness served him well in school and beyond. “Why?” is a question he asks a lot. Andy focuses on fully understanding the complexities of a situation so that he can identify and implement efficient solutions.

Andy has spent 12 years in higher education and, in that time, his commitment to asking questions and finding answers has provided him with the skills needed to navigate the complications of state licensure, policy development, financial aid, registrar services, and regulatory compliance. After seeing several institutions struggling to maintain compliance with regulatory requirements, Andy asked, “why?” Why couldn’t there be one clear, accurate resource that showed an institution what they needed to do to comply with every state’s requirements? Over the last few years, he has channeled his considerable energy into building an extensive knowledge base about state licensure requirements for the higher education space. He works collaboratively with higher education leaders navigating challenging regulations to create transparent and efficient processes that further their mission.

Marketing and Operations

When Emily turned four, her parents gave her three pet goldfish for her birthday. She named them all “Flounder,” so that if/when any of them died, she’d still have at least one sidekick named Flounder (just like Ariel). This strange mix of imagination and pragmatism remains a key component of her personality and is a big part of why she loves marketing and communication. This, combined with her passion for celebrating authenticity, creativity, and originality, led to the development of Emily’s guiding philosophy, “own your weirdness.”

She has worked in many different fields, but no matter what role she was originally hired for, content and media creation would always find their way into her work. When EduCred Services takes on new clients, one of Emily’s first questions is, “What is this client telling the world?” Emily focuses on learning how organizations see themselves, what they communicate about their identities, and how they represent themselves to a target audience. An organization can have an utterly beautiful, inclusive, world-changing, life-affirming mission and culture, but if it is getting buried in meandering, confusing, jargon-filled explanations, no one actually benefits. Emily helps organizations convey their histories, procedures, and plans for the future with words that honor their unique character and mission, and with content that helps them own their weirdness.

Accreditation & Curriculum

An introvert by nature, Amy’s response to being told by her mother to “Go play outside,” as a child, involved keeping her nose firmly planted in a book as she relocated under a tree in the backyard. Her sustained passion for reading ignited a lifelong love of learning and an enthusiastic pursuit of knowledge. Much to her practical father’s dismay, she earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy, which sparked a desire to earn a Ph.D. in literature. Embracing her bookish nature, she evolved into an active listener, critical thinker, and thoughtful online instructor and administrator dedicated to improving the student experience and providing equitable opportunities for students in higher education.

With over twenty years of service in higher education administration, online instruction, and student support, Amy helps clients navigate the complexities of accreditation, curriculum, assessment, and institutional development. Her work is driven by a deep dedication to compassionate leadership, integrity, and a desire to serve students. Amy’s profound understanding of mission-driven objectives, accreditation standards, inclusive curriculum, and achievement of outcomes helps clients create and sustain a continuous cycle of improvement to deliver high-quality, accessible, and applicable educational experiences.

Project Management

Kadera grew up watching her mom, a paraeducator, then librarian, and eventually school secretary, transform lives from inside the walls of a small elementary school, That early glimpse into the heart of education stuck with her. Inspired by her mother’s impact, Kadera launched her own career in the classroom, working as a substitute teacher and early childhood educator. While her original plan was to teach middle school social studies, she quickly fell in love with the magic of learning at every level—from helping preschoolers write their names to guiding high school seniors through the basics of economics.

Eventually, Kadera took her passion for education into the corporate world, where she spent more than a decade streamlining systems, building thoughtful training programs, and crafting communications that help teams work smarter. No matter the setting, her mission is the same: make things clearer, kinder, and more effective for clients, colleagues, and learners alike.  At EduCred Services, Kadera brings a mix of organization, communication savvy, and follow-through to keep client timelines on track and our team moving forward together.

Accreditation, Assessments, and State Licensure

Kathy has always been someone who can't resist a good puzzle, the kind with a thousand interlocking pieces and no picture on the box. As a young person, she was drawn to the satisfaction of taking something tangled and complicated and patiently working it into order, a habit that has shaped everything from how she approaches her morning walks to how she untangles the most labyrinthine regulatory requirements. Whether she's practicing Tai Chi, working through an audiobook, or wrangling four children and two dogs in Columbia, Maryland, Kathy brings the same steady, methodical curiosity to all of it. That instinct for finding the through-line in complexity is exactly what she offers her clients: the ability to see how all the pieces fit together and to chart a clear path forward.

With more than two decades in higher education spanning public and private institutions and the federal government, Kathy helps clients navigate program growth and development, institutional effectiveness, accreditation and licensure, graduate education, and program evaluation. She most recently served as an accreditation consultant, leading state authorization and discipline-based accreditation efforts for several colleges, and previously guided strategic enrollment planning for more than 25 graduate programs at a large state university. Her executive career includes serving as Dean of the School of Education at Notre Dame of Maryland University and Associate Provost at Goucher College, with earlier leadership roles at Morgan State, Towson University, Howard Community College, Marymount University, and The George Washington University. She also brings federal contracting experience with Trewon Technologies, leading large grant program evaluations for the Department of Education and the Department of Homeland Security. With seventeen years as a Middle States Commission on Higher Education accreditation examiner and appeals panel member, Past President of the Maryland Association for Institutional Research, an Ed.D. and MBA from UMass Amherst, an AB from Smith College, PMP certification, and a Top-Secret security clearance, Kathy combines deep institutional knowledge with a rare breadth of perspective, and a genuine commitment to helping educational leaders advance their missions.

Accreditation & Assessment

Chris grew up hearing about his dad's work at a Philadelphia high school. A retired police officer who had taken an administrative job there, he could not stop serving, spending his afternoons helping struggling students with their coursework and talking through what came after graduation. None of it was in his job description. He did it because the need was there and he believed in the power of education, and that belief is one Chris carried into his own career.

Chris took that same commitment into nearly three decades as an Army officer, much of it at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Virginia, and at West Point he taught philosophy and English, developed leaders at every level, and served as Associate Dean for Strategy and Initiatives, leading strategic planning, assessment, and accreditation efforts across a 550-member faculty. He specializes in institutional assessment and strategic planning, helping institutions plan for the range of futures they might face rather than the one they expect. For over a decade, Chris has served as a peer evaluator with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, working on teams at 28 institutions of every size and type and reviewing applicants for initial accreditation. He brings the same instinct to EduCred Services table, helping institutions see their work more clearly, tell their story more effectively, and strengthen what they already do well, so they can keep serving their students as the landscape shifts.