 Winning the CoSN Volunteer of the Year award in 2017. | Here we are, a few days past the CoSN 2025 conference, which took place March 28 - April 01, 2025. My head is swimming with lots of new content, contacts, and reflections. In our book, The Savvy EdTech Leader, I discuss reflection. I’ve been able to discipline myself to reflect throughout my career. I have always felt that reflecting on my past will help my future. If you know me, you also know that I take photos at every opportunity. Good memories come with great images. It’s always fun to look back at the old photo albums of my past and the special people in them. |
This year, CoSN was filled with many emotions for me. My two-year Chairpersonship came to an end at this CoSN Conference. While I have one more year left on the board, where I now serve as Past Chair, this conference was bittersweet.
I remember coming to my first CoSN conference in 2015 and feeling that this was the conference for me and these were my people. As a new Chief Technology and Information Officer at Green Bay Public Schools, I had many issues to solve. I got to know CoSN and Keith Krueger through my service on the digital equity and data privacy committees. CoSN was the perfect organization for me to plug into resources and people who were in the know and got stuff done. As I became more active in committees and the organization, I eventually earned the volunteer of the year award for my service to CoSN.
I remember coming to my first CoSN conference in 2015 and feeling that this was the conference for me and these were my people. As a new Chief Technology and Information Officer at Green Bay Public Schools, I had many issues to solve. I got to know CoSN and Keith Krueger through my service on the digital equity and data privacy committees. CoSN was the perfect organization for me to plug into resources and people who were in the know and got stuff done. As I became more active in committees and the organization, I eventually earned the volunteer of the year award for my service to CoSN.
At CoSN 2018, members Steve Langford and Pete Just approached me to see if I would consider running for the CoSN Board. The election was successful, and my tenure on the board started in 2019 with Chad Stevens and Marlo Gaddis, who were also new board members.
When I joined the CoSN Board in 2019, I formerly worked with Donna Williamson and Sheryl Abshire, who served on the Board and were terming off. As a fangirl of those two for years, I found working with them as colleagues exciting.
 Looking back at my vast photo collection, Sheryl and I had worked together in 2017 in presenting on Student Data Privacy with George Couros at an RTM event. |  Here is a photo of the women of CoSN in February 2019. |  It was at the CoSN conference in 2019 that I met Frankie Jackson. |
What I remember with all three of these women was their openness to collaborate and their mutual respect as female edtech leaders in a male-dominated world. - Diane Doersch
Sheryl Abshire, whose wealth of knowledge and activism in policy and eRate (perhaps you saw her in the multiple shots of the 2016 Democratic convention) caught my attention right away. Whenever we were in audiences, Sheryl would be the one to stand up, introduce herself, and say something brilliant. She was the one whom people flocked to after a presentation to continue the discussion and to connect.
I wanted to be friends with her because working with her could assist her with what she was doing and provide me with an opportunity to learn from one of the trailblazers in the edtech space. One of the things that Sheryl talks about in our book is Allyship. I always stress that allyship is an alliance without motive to gain anything. We build partnerships because working together can be mutually beneficial in creating synergy and our own knowledge bases. It should not be to have the end game of getting a better job, making more money, expanding your network, etc.
When partnerships are done right, those things may be the outcome of the allyship, but should NOT be the reasons for the allyship. Ally relationships must be balanced, where both parties feel they’re making gains, and should never be one-sided, where only one person gains. I am honored to call Sheryl Abshire one of my allies, and I love watching her continue to serve as an ally to so many in our edtech space.
I wanted to be friends with her because working with her could assist her with what she was doing and provide me with an opportunity to learn from one of the trailblazers in the edtech space. One of the things that Sheryl talks about in our book is Allyship. I always stress that allyship is an alliance without motive to gain anything. We build partnerships because working together can be mutually beneficial in creating synergy and our own knowledge bases. It should not be to have the end game of getting a better job, making more money, expanding your network, etc.
When partnerships are done right, those things may be the outcome of the allyship, but should NOT be the reasons for the allyship. Ally relationships must be balanced, where both parties feel they’re making gains, and should never be one-sided, where only one person gains. I am honored to call Sheryl Abshire one of my allies, and I love watching her continue to serve as an ally to so many in our edtech space.
Donna Williamson - when I joined the CoSN board she was finishing her job as board secretary and was training colleague Marlo Gaddis to continue on with the role on the board. Donna’s attention to detail is impeccable. As a self-proclaimed type A personality, if a question needed to be named and a resolution found, I would watch Donna skillfully and artfully ask the question, involve the right knowledge holders in discussion, and fairly get the group to come to consensus.
With my woo-woo personality and often large picture vision without thinking about all the details, Donna is a type of person I gravitate toward because of their attention to detail and asking the right questions. As I watch Donna facilitate the CoSN K12 Early CTO Academy, I always appreciate how she can manage everything that goes along with running such an enormous and impactful program.
Even in the authoring of our book, Donna pushed for the precise details on the large things, like chapter flow, and the small things, like how we listed our key strategies.
With my woo-woo personality and often large picture vision without thinking about all the details, Donna is a type of person I gravitate toward because of their attention to detail and asking the right questions. As I watch Donna facilitate the CoSN K12 Early CTO Academy, I always appreciate how she can manage everything that goes along with running such an enormous and impactful program.
Even in the authoring of our book, Donna pushed for the precise details on the large things, like chapter flow, and the small things, like how we listed our key strategies.
I introduced myself to Frankie Jackson at the CoSN 2019 Conference. I had seen her win the Withrow Award for Outstanding CTO at a previous conference and always felt I wanted her on my list of friends and colleagues. Her executive presence, her polish, and the intelligence she projected always made me curious about who she was. I saw her working on her laptop in a hotel lobby between sessions at the conference, so I approached her and introduced myself.
In 2020, when the global pandemic rocked the world, she and I worked on a business continuity rubric for ClassLink. Mary Batiwalla and Berj Akian from ClassLink developed the rubric and felt it could be helpful to edTech leaders as they worked to get their districts up and running amid the pandemic. Frankie, a Baldridge-certified member, had the idea of creating a maturity model for business continuity. Together, the two of us worked on garnering feedback from our CoSN community, preparing the document for publication, and socializing it with the edtech community.
Frankie’s organizational skills, zeal for continuous learning, and internal drive for excellence intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more about them. We’ve selected each other as “partners” to work with in any challenging project because we’ve learned that when the two of us work together, it makes our work better and the product better.
Frankie incorporated the same maturity model concept with the NIST Cybersecurity standards and other standards to create the Cybersecurity Coalition’s Cybersecurity Rubric, which has a national impact on our school districts. It has been an honor to support Frankie in this critical work.
In 2020, when the global pandemic rocked the world, she and I worked on a business continuity rubric for ClassLink. Mary Batiwalla and Berj Akian from ClassLink developed the rubric and felt it could be helpful to edTech leaders as they worked to get their districts up and running amid the pandemic. Frankie, a Baldridge-certified member, had the idea of creating a maturity model for business continuity. Together, the two of us worked on garnering feedback from our CoSN community, preparing the document for publication, and socializing it with the edtech community.
Frankie’s organizational skills, zeal for continuous learning, and internal drive for excellence intrigued me, and I wanted to learn more about them. We’ve selected each other as “partners” to work with in any challenging project because we’ve learned that when the two of us work together, it makes our work better and the product better.
Frankie incorporated the same maturity model concept with the NIST Cybersecurity standards and other standards to create the Cybersecurity Coalition’s Cybersecurity Rubric, which has a national impact on our school districts. It has been an honor to support Frankie in this critical work.
So, there you have it. The story of a fan-girl turned colleague and co-author. It was an absolute blast to share concepts from our Savvy EdTech Leader book at CoSN Conference 2025 and to be interviewed by ISTE CEO Richard Cullata at the CoSN Volunteer Hall of Fame event.
In that interview, Frankie, Donna, Sheryl, and I all admitted that if we were approached to write this book solo, none of us would have done it. It was together that we chose to move forward in authorship. Led by Frankie’s chapter organization and a cadence of weekly meetings for over a year, we pushed, pulled, and lifted each other up to create this resource for our edtech community that will hopefully serve our ecosystem long beyond our existence. For that, I am grateful.
In that interview, Frankie, Donna, Sheryl, and I all admitted that if we were approached to write this book solo, none of us would have done it. It was together that we chose to move forward in authorship. Led by Frankie’s chapter organization and a cadence of weekly meetings for over a year, we pushed, pulled, and lifted each other up to create this resource for our edtech community that will hopefully serve our ecosystem long beyond our existence. For that, I am grateful.
It was an honor to serve on a panel that provided a behind the scenes look at our book. Richard Culatta, ISTE’s CEO, did the moderating.
