IRA Conventions

As IRA’s Content Integration Officer, I worked with authors and speakers for IRA projects across all product areas, including IRA events. Specifically, I managed keynote and featured speakers and invited sessions for the IRA Annual Convention, for IRA Institutes, and for online events such as webinars and podcasts.

I worked with IRA’s Board of Directors to develop a slate of keynote and featured speakers for the Annual Convention. This included a mix of high profile literacy experts and popular children’s literature authors.

I was able to expand and enhance on children’s literature authors that participated in the event by planning a yearly meeting in New York City between IRA and children’s literature publishers. This event gave us the opportunity to develop stronger relationships with the publisher’s editors and publicity directors and work together on developing a slate of speakers that would benefit both IRA and the publishers.

In addition to keynote and featured speakers, I also managed the program and speakers for IRA’s popular Teaching Edge program. The Teaching Edge sessions were extremely popular and were consistently presented to capacity audiences.

For convention and smaller events, I identified speakers, negotiated with the speaker or their publisher for the appearance, managed contracts,  selected rooms for the events, developed the schedule for the sessions, and worked with the housing department on accommodations and logistical arrangements for the presenters. I also worked with the speakers to promote their sessions through the development of program and promotional content for ads, videos, podcasts, blogs, and website content.

IRA Institutes

In addition to the Convention, I worked with IRA authors to develop intensive, multi-day institutes with IRA authors. Below is an example of one of those events.

CSR Literacy Leadership Institute

 This Institute at Coronado Springs in Disney World was led by one of IRA’s top authors, Valerie Ellery. I worked on the event coordination and marketing for IRA in collaboration with Valerie Ellery. I also provided on-site logistical assistance.

Webinars

Common Core State Standards webinar series

I worked with the Director of Research to develop the content for a series of webinars introducing key topics in the Common Core State Standards. We collaborated on the selection of speakers and topics. I invited the speakers, managed the contracts, worked with speakers on webinar descriptions and web content, and scheduled the live events. During the live event, I monitored the chat box to filter questions to the speakers.

Common Core State Standards Website Resource Area

In addition to the webinar series, I set up a resource section on the IRA website to help teachers and administrators learn more about the Common Core State Standards.