Dr. BSD leverages 25+ years of experience in teaching, coaching, leadership, and consulting to provide strengths-based professional and education services. As the director of Sarah BSD LLC, a WBE-certified business in New York City, Dr. BSD works in partnership with school administrators and community organizations to design, pilot, fund, iterate, and expand innovative student-centered programming. Dr. BSD’s research aligns to the programming work in schools with a focus on peer tutoring, peer coaching, and peer mentoring. In her roles as researcher and Board Director with At Promise Learning Inc., Dr. BSD leads efforts to advance sustained, cohort-based mentoring programs that prepare students for success in high school, college, and career.

Holding coaching certifications from the ICF and Gallup, Dr. BSD works with individuals and teams as a catalyst for personal and organizational learning in the face of change and uncertainty through strengths-based and emotionally intelligent coaching. Dr. BSD seeks to amplify joy, love, and vitality through her student-centered approaches to coaching, teaching, and training.

Dr. BSD holds a doctorate in Urban Educational Leadership from Columbia University as well as degrees from Swarthmore College and Tufts University. Dr. BSD is a licensed Social Studies and ESL teacher, having taught in Boston, New York, and Japan. Dr. BSD has designed and taught leadership courses at Columbia University in Decision-Making, Strategic Agility, Strategic Advocacy, and Executive Presence. As the Associate Director of the Urban Education Leaders Program and Summer Principal Academy NOLA, Dr. BSD taught masters-level courses in School Leadership and designed professional learning programming for school and district administrators in New York, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. After serving at Teachers College, Dr. BSD joined Arete Education, an innovative, mission-driven non-profit organization. In the roles of Executive Director and President, Dr. BSD engineered the transformation of the organization during the pandemic from an afterschool program provider to a grassroots humanitarian aid organization and career incubator for Latinx and Black youth in the South Bronx. That transformative experience ignited Dr. BSD’s passion for mentoring young adults from middle school through high school, college, and into meaningful and successful careers.