ABOUT SUSAN
About Susan
Susan MacDonald is the founder of Inspiring New Perspectives, a consulting group focused on empowering school leaders and educators to create learning environments that deeply respect and nurture the possibilities that lie within each teacher, child, and parent. Susan’s passion and expertise for creating positive change are reflected in her professional speaking and coaching, and in her recent award-winning book, Inspiring Early Childhood Leadership: Eight Strategies to Ignite Passion and Transform Program Quality.
Susan is a lifelong learner, continually adding to her own knowledge through the exploration of new research and literature, allowing her to provide educators and leaders with the tools to effect positive change in their own organizations. Susan holds a Master’s degree in Instructional Design, and multiple professional coaching certifications. Susan has been developing and delivering inspirational courses, keynotes and workshops for over 25 years, throughout the United States, Canada, Italy, Jamaica, Wales, and Ireland.
Susan’s background encompasses a wide range of experiences, including director of a Reggio inspired preschool program, adjunct faculty at Lesley University, Wheelock College and Southern New Hampshire University, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts licensing supervisor. She is the current president of Boston Area Reggio Inspired Network and past vice president of the Massachusetts Association for the Education of Young Children.
Away from work, Susan can be found reading, cooking, traveling or simply enjoying life’s rich everyday moments with her husband Patrick and their four children.
Speaking
Susan has developed a wide variety of workshops and keynote presentations designed to inspire educational professionals to weave new approaches, ideas and strategies into their daily work. Susan creates engaging and inspiring professional development experiences for individuals, small groups, and large audiences. Susan prides herself on customizing her keynotes, retreats and workshop presentations to meet the unique goals and needs of the participants.
Coaching
As a professionally certified coach, Susan works with educational leaders to create opportunities for them to develop and execute a vision that aligns with their core beliefs. Susan’s individual coaching services are designed to cultivate the skills and dispositions that leaders need to improve program quality, increase positive energy, enhance professional working relationships, and create inspirational learning environments for children, educators and families. Her deep knowledge of early childhood quality standards combined with her unique professional background give her an unrivaled ability to successfully guide leaders through the coaching process to bringing their vision and goals to life in concrete ways.
Author
Susan’s goal as an author is to write books that present leaders with a vision of new possibilities and provide them with tools to create high-quality learning environments, fueled by positive, engaging energy. Her first book, Inspiring Early Childhood Leadership – winner of the AAP Revere Awards (Classroom: Professional Resources-School Climate) – lays out strategies to support program leaders in discovering new ways to reduce the levels of stress on themselves and their staff, and move into a unified, engaging system for leading with passion, intention, and purpose. Susan is currently working on her second book, which will focus on creating engaging and impactful professional development.