Team

Decades ago, Kelly’s dad talked with her about making a 2 Degree Shift in the education sector, and in her career. He noted a sailing ship will adjust two degrees to completely change direction. His analogy was to show we don’t need to redirect everything and convince everyone to make a lasting contribution. An interesting juxtaposition to technology, which is in constant shift. However, there too, consistent effort and collaboration bring about the best products and solutions to complex problems.

Thanks, Kelly +1 559-670-0352 | KellyCooper@2DegreeShift.com

Kelly Cooper // CEO

Kelly Cooper designs and builds equitable learning pathways, curriculum, and content that drive access to livable wage jobs. With 25 years of experience in California’s community college system as Vice Chancellor (Chief Technology and Chief Instruction Officer) and Computer Information Systems faculty, Kelly advocates for additive public, private partnerships with industry to guide students and teachers in collaborative endeavors. Today’s increasing complexity in technology, socioeconomic caste, and media politics widens the chasm from youth to career. Kelly brings deep expertise in strategic planning, fundraising, career technical education, economic development, budget management, curriculum implementation, and transnational community development. Her doctoral degree from the University of San Francisco, is in Educational Leadership with a Pacific Rim emphasis.

Veronika Focht // OER Author and Principal Designer

Veronika Focht writes, designs, and edits OER books. As Principal Designer for Livable Wage Jobs and 2 Degree Shift, Veronika leads Open Education Resources (OER) book design and is the graphic designer for OER content to include WBL projects, assessments, presentations, rubrics, etc. that strive to engage students and support teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals.

Dara Ramos // Project Manager

Dara Ramos manages projects like AP 4 CTE and is responsible for researching labor market trends to ensure development of courses and pathways align to current industry need. Dara also collaborates in pre-award grant application development and post-award grant management. She also manages the publishing and maintenance of Open Education Resources (OER) materials on national and state repository sites. Dara began working in higher education in 2016 working with grants and institutional data. She managed the ECampus Dual Enrollment program at West Hills College, helping underrepresented high school students earn CTE college credit and industry certifications. While at West Hills, Dara assisted in collecting and analyzing student-level data to assess achievement outcomes and identify equity gaps at the program, college, and district level.

Benjamin Ramos // Project Manager

Benjamin leads OER projects, currently Allied Health Math, and OER Spanish translations. His passion is assisting those who are underserved and seeing others strive in inequitable circumstances. Benjamin’s unique perspective on helping others was further developed at West Hills Community College where he collaborated in developing strategies and implementing training for migrant and seasonal farmworkers in rural communities. Additionally, Benjamin volunteers in a development team for innovative, standardized prison ministry efforts for his local church. His love for the human body led him to the field of Surgical Technology with an acute experience in orthopedics and spine surgery. Outside of work responsibilities, Benjamin loves endurance sports, national parks, and of course enjoying life with his wife.

Yasin Hassan // Technical Editor

Yasin graduated cum Laude from George Mason University in 2020 with a degree in Applied Mathematics. Yasin’s programming experiences include Python, MATLAB, SQL, R, AutoML, and PowerBI, modeling and analyzing COVID-19 data, and using machine learning as a diagnostic tool for pneumonia. Yasin’s Udacity certifications include Data Analysis and Visualization with Power BI, Programming for Data Science with R, Programming for Data Science with Python, and AI Product Manager. Additional areas of interest include electronics, technical writing, and blockchain technology. Yasin’s collaborative approach to learning engages students from different backgrounds with varying learning styles.

Stacy Cabrera // Author

Stacy Cabrera’s current experience is in the planning and dissemination of program designs in Philosophy and Student Research. She currently teaches AP Capstone in Downey, CA, where she gets to marry critical thinking and practical skills applications–as her favorite writer Aldous Huxley had said, “nothing short of everything will really do.” Her main goal for students is learning how to analyze and interpret good writing and argumentation and replicate such academic contributions of their own through active research designs and methodologies. Much of her approach has been influenced by her time as a chair member (July 2022) with the American Philosophical Association’s committee on Pre-college Philosophy Instruction and as a member/presenter with the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization. She is also an active member of the Aspiring Thinkers and Pacific Partnership Critical Thinking Project with colleagues from UCLA, Pepperdine, the University of Queensland, and the Impact Centre, which seeks to advocate for successfully proven methods for the development of critical thinking and inquiry at the primary and secondary levels.

Regina Kloes-Corwin // Pre-Apprentice Deep Dive Lead

Regina has been working in education for over 23 years at the K-12 level, teaching in Fresno and Los Angeles counties. She currently serves as Associate Principal at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School. Beyond K-12, Regina worked in higher education as an Adjunct Professor teaching business through West Hills College and as a guest lecturer teaching Design Thinking at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education. In addition, Regina works at a non-profit as a principal for the Peninsula Education Foundation. Regina holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership Administration and Policy from Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education, a Master’s Degree in Kinesiology and Human Performance, and a certificate from Harvard Business School in Business Analytics, Economics for Managers, and Financial Accounting. She is a member of the Harvard Business School Online Chapter, which serves the University and other HBS Online Chapters worldwide in annual Community Challenges to design global solutions to challenging problems in underserved communities.

Denny Burzynski // Author

Denny Burzynski has a Master’s Degree in Mathematics from the California State University, Long Beach, and has taught mathematics at California and Nevada community colleges for 45 years. His programming experience started when Fortran IV was popular and used line numbers and punch cards. With some of his friends, Denny authored six college mathematics textbooks from basic arithmetic, elementary, and intermediate algebra, college algebra, to applied calculus. Denny presented at many mathematics conferences all over the country, spent a semester interning as a program director at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., and served as president of both the California Mathematics Council Community Colleges and the Nevada Mathematical Association of Community Colleges.

Additional Contributors

Nicky Hickman – Advisor
Mauricio Elias Rojas Hernandez – Spanish Translator
Naseem Ahad – Accessibility Specialist PDFs
Grant Minnis – Website Layout Designer
Susan Woodford – Website Developer
Goran Lochert – Unity and C# Developer
Gopi Perumal – LaTex for Open Education Resources (OER)
Muhammad Awais – Mathematics Technical Reviewer and Editor
Aram Atyan – Logos for OER
Javier Castillo, Abdul Sami, Jannat Singh – Tutorial Subject Matter Experts