LaChandra Fitzgerald, PhD

LaChandra Fitzgerald is an educator, curriculum developer, and assessment specialist with more than two decades of experience spanning K–12 and postsecondary education. Her career began with active-duty service in the United States Air Force, after which she transitioned into education, working first as a tutor and later as a classroom teacher at the middle and high school levels. She went on to serve as an interventionist in Title I schools, where she began developing curriculum tailored to the needs of struggling readers. That experience laid the groundwork for her eventual shift into full-time curriculum and assessment development, a path that would come to define her career. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy from The University of Texas at Dallas and a Master of Arts in English/Language Arts Teacher Education from the University of West Georgia.

In 2021, Fitzgerald founded We Write Curriculum, a research-based curriculum company built to close the gap between everyday classroom instruction and the demands of state assessments. Through this work, she created Independent Comprehension Design™ (ICD™), a proprietary framework that examines how vocabulary accessibility, background knowledge, coherence, and text structure shape a student's ability to genuinely comprehend what they read. Her guiding belief is simple: students cannot demonstrate understanding if they cannot first access meaning. In addition to leading We Write Curriculum, she has contributed her expertise to organizations including ATLAS, Gooru Learning, and Cognia, where she has written, reviewed, and edited ELA assessment items and instructional passages aligned to state and national standards.

Beyond her technical contributions to literacy and assessment design, Fitzgerald is driven by a deep commitment to advocacy, integrity, and the people behind the profession. She attributes her achievements to an unwavering refusal to compromise her values, even when doing so would be the easier path, and to a genuine investment in the success of every student and educator she serves. She credits mentor Linda Mixon with first encouraging her toward a career in teaching, a nudge that ultimately shaped her life's work. Outside the classroom and curriculum design, Fitzgerald channels that same philosophy into Power to Leave, where she explores leadership, emotional intelligence, and workplace culture, reflecting her belief that the environments people build shape the individuals within them. She was selected as a featured honoree in the 2026 edition of Influential Women in recognition of her contributions to education and literacy advancement.