About the Presenters

Sarah Frazelle, M.A. is the Co-Director of the National Student Attendance and Engagement Center and a senior researcher at AIR focusing on projects related to attendance, Early Warning Systems, and college and career readiness and success. She brings over 15 years of experience in providing technical assistance to schools, districts, and states in implementing student support systems such as Early Warning Systems, MTSS, and PBIS. She has received national attention for her brief A Practitioner’s Guide to Implementing Early Warning Systems and was recently featured by Branching Minds in their podcast How Leaders Can Mitigate Drop-Out Risk Using Early Warning Indicators. Her most recent area of focus has been integrating student and family voice to help guide the selection of interventions that address the root causes of where students need support.

In her previous role as the Director of MTSS and Early Warning Indicator Systems at Puget Sound ESD in WA state, Sarah focused on developing and providing tailored technical assistance that braids quantitative and qualitative data to create action plans for school improvement. With over 17 years of experience in designing and conducting evaluation studies, she helps education teams ensure that the interventions and systems they implement are having the desired impact on students. Sarah holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Kansas.

Trudy Bender is the Senior Manager of Thought Leadership Content at Branching Minds. She previously served as the Coordinator of District Behavior Intervention at Waco ISD, where she facilitated the implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports for behavior along with initiatives to improve school climate and to build teacher capacity in classroom management through peer coaching. She is passionate about helping teachers and administrators to develop a positive, restorative, instructional approach to behavior that reduces disproportionality in discipline while improving social-emotional and academic outcomes for all students. Trudy holds an Ed.S. in school psychology from Baylor University.

Emily-Rose Barry is the VP of Product at Branching Minds. She has worked in education technology in roles overseeing product and customer success for the past ten years. Before joining the world of agile software development, she taught reading and writing at every level from early childhood to college, administered special programs for an adult literacy nonprofit, and published short fiction and poetry as a freelance writer. She is a co-founder of ProductTank Buffalo, a local community for networking and professional development.