About Watershed Advisors
Watershed powers governments with the vision, talent, and insight to conceive of high-value education and workforce ideas, and then to make those visions an enduring reality for children, families, and workers across entire geographies.
Launched in 2021, Watershed was founded by former leaders of the Louisiana Department of Education, whose nearly decade-long tenure was defined by nationally recognized innovation in early childhood education, curriculum and preparation, college and career pathways, student assessment, and school accountability.
Watershed is a woman-owned and woman-led organization.
“An event or period marking a turning point in a course of action or state of affairs.”
What’s in a Name?
Watershed (n): a land area that channels water to creeks, streams, and rivers, and eventually to outflow points such as reservoirs, bays, and the ocean; or a crucial line, factor, or turning point.
In choosing our name, the organization’s founders aimed to select a title that creatively captured our mission to translate good ideas into turning points in the future of the American education system. The founders also wanted to nod to the team’s foundation in Louisiana. Baton Rouge, which the team called home for more than a decade, sits along the Mississippi River, the nation’s largest watershed.
BRINGING GOOD IDEAS TO LIFE
Good ideas almost never scale within the massive and fragmented American child care, education, and workforce systems. In order to find their way to the communities and families who need them, good ideas need an advocate within the system, someone who knows the system and understands how it can work to bring good ideas to life.