Angeline Davis

My journey into education and meaningful learning started from a deeply personal place. My mother had me when she was a teenager, and back then you had to drop out of school. She wasn't unintelligent, just uneducated. When I was in elementary school, she got her GED pretty easily and enrolled in community college, but an English teacher there specifically made her feel stupid. Having no support and very little self-esteem, she dropped out and never went back. I didn't realize it at the time, but I internalized that as a child. I observed it, as kids do, and it developed a drive within me to be involved in education and meaningful education and accessibility. Since 2004, I've worked across public education, higher education, healthcare, military, manufacturing, and nonprofit sectors. I started with curriculum development and teaching high school English, then moved to college curriculum and instructional design. I was a flipped classroom pioneer and became an associate dean in higher education in 2016. In 2018, I transitioned to corporate work, doing facilitation and instructional design for the CDC VAX hotline during COVID-19, then helped develop Humana's Medicaid expansion. I developed Train the Trainer programs for onshore and offshore markets, led instructional design for the USS Gerald Ford through a military contractor, and served as lead instructional designer for Blue Oval SK (Ford's EV battery plant), where I created all their learning and development style guides and about 90% of their training materials. Currently, I'm working on instructional design for the Air Force's new T7A training fighter jet. I'm also earning my master's in social work and starting a doctorate in social work through USC. I founded Brighter Days Inc., a Louisville-based non-profit for individuals with substance use disorder and co-occurring serious mental illness. I serve as Kentucky State Policy Director for the National Shattering Silence Coalition and Secretary for the Kentucky Behavioral Health Planning and Advisory Council. I live my life by the quote 'we rise by lifting others.' What I'm most proud of is just not giving up, no matter what - pure resilience.