EDUCATION ENTREPRENEURS: DESIGNING INNOVATIVE MODELS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

This Salon featured two remarkable founding CEOs, Jeannine Piacenza and Irasema Salcedo. They have designed innovative education models that serve children in our metropolitan DC communities: one with a focus on pre-school bilingual education and the other, with a focus on building civic leadership and public policy skills in school.

Jeannine Piacenza is the Co-founder and CEO of CommuniKids Preschool and Children’s Language Center. CommuniKids is the region’s premier early childhood language immersion center with four locations, offering preschool, Kindergarten, language classes, and after school programs in Spanish, French, Mandarin, and Arabic. Jeannine has been a PreK-12 educator for over twenty years and an entrepreneur since 2005 when she co-founded CommuniKids.  Prior to starting CommuniKids, Jeannine taught Spanish, ESL, and social studies in several cities in the U.S. and served as the Director of the English Department at ITESM, a bilingual high school in Mexico City, Mexico. Jeannine holds degrees in Education, Spanish, and History, and a Masters Degree in History. A passionate and dedicated educator, Jeannine serves on the Advisory Board of the DC chapter of Pratham USA, a non-profit dedicated to interventional programs to eradicate illiteracy across India. She lives in Bethesda with her husband and her bilingual daughter who was the first CommuniKids student.

Irasema Salcido’s life serves as a testament that individuals who start from humble beginnings can defy the odds and achieve the American dream. The daughter of Mexican immigrant farm workers, Salcido came to the United States at 14 years old without speaking English. Considering the language barrier and other obstacles facing immigrants, Salcido persevered and received a B.A. degree in Business Administration from California State University, Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics and a M.A. in Education, Administration and Social Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 1998, Salcido founded Cesar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. Her goal was to ensure that all students, regardless of their background and previous success in school, would have access to a high quality education that prepared them to graduate from college and give back to their communities. Following the success of the first school, Salcido expanded the program to include two middle schools and two high schools now serving 1,500 students. Prior to founding the Chavez Schools, Salcido worked for nine years in the DC Public School system.