Our Team

CommunityShare was founded by Josh Schachter in collaboration with a passionate group of educators, entrepreneurs, artists, ecologists, nonprofit organizations, technophiles, graduate students, and community leaders.

  • David Nixon
    David Nixon Software Engineer

    David oversees CommunityShare’s online platform and other tech-related needs. A full-stack developer formerly at IBM, he blends product thinking with hands-on engineering to keep things reliable, secure, and easy to use. Outside of code, David enjoys sewing,reading sci-fi novels, playing board games, and all The Legend of Zelda games.

  • Luke Bultman
    Luke Bultman Product Manager

    Luke operates as our Product Manager, guiding and coaching our product team to turn our visions into reality for CommunityShare and our customers. Luke has spent time leading teams of people and products for over 15 years in both start up and corporate cultures. His diversified experience stretches into the ed tech and entertainment industries. During his career he’s mostly worked on SaaS products that have been built to serve the needs of the customer. A passionate part of his existence is working alongside people, because after all we need people to build tools that ultimately benefit others, our communities and our world.  He greatly enjoys coaching, partnering and rolling up his sleeves to do the work, and building the things that create change in the little and big spaces. Born and raised in Arizona, Luke loves the desert, and can be found wandering its paths running long distances – sometimes with friends, solo or his dogs.  Active in his community, you may see him coaching youth on the soccer field, serving in volunteer roles or traveling with his family.

  • Josh Schachter
    Josh Schachter Director & Founder

    Josh is an educator, visual storyteller and social ecologist. His passion for real-world learning started in high school when he had the opportunity to undertake turtle research in South Carolina and Alabama with herpetologist Jeff Lovich. This field experience led Josh to pursue a career in ecosystem management. He earned a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he explored the role of youth-produced media in supporting personal and community transformation. Over the past 20+ years he has collaborated on community-based media projects with youth, teachers, neighborhood groups, and nonprofit organizations in places ranging from New Delhi to Nigeria. He co-founded VOICES Inc., a nonprofit organization that hired low-income youth to work as journalists to tell the stories of their lives and communities in Tucson. Josh co-founded the Finding Voice program with ELL teacher Julie Kasper in Tucson to support the literacy, multimedia, critical thinking, collaborative, and civic leadership skills of refugee and immigrant students.

  • Jil Mackenzie
    Jil Mackenzie Professional Learning Designer

    Jil designs and facilitates professional learning for educators across CommunityShare’s network. A teacher at heart, she earned a Master’s in Secondary English Education from Syracuse University and spent the next decade in middle and high schools across New York. She honed her skills as an educator, instructional coach, and program designer in partnership with EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) and Outward Bound Schools, whose holistic vision of student achievement and active, community-engaged approach to learning directly align with CommunityShare’s mission. Jil believes deeply in the power of education to help us all build a better world and is honored to work alongside educators, students and communities, as we reimagine systems and forge new bonds that enrich us all. In her free time, Jil can be found in the woods of Wilmington, DE on a mountain bike, just trying to keep up with her husband and their three year old daughter.

  • Jill Helme
    Jill Helme Director of Operations

    Jill directs CommunityShare’s daily business and administrative operations and works closely with all staff to advance Community Share’s mission and strategic goals.  Jill began her career as a high school language arts and math teacher where she learned that a true robust, quality education required both in-school and out-of-school programming. She went on to earn her Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and has spent the past 15+ years leading nonprofits focused on youth-based workforce development, music and arts education, and afterschool programs. In her spare time Jill enjoys traveling and camping with her family, running, and making ice cream. 

  • Michelle Magnusson
    Michelle Magnusson Director of Community Engagement & Strategy
    Michelle leads CommunityShare’s community engagement strategy and work. She has been a teacher, strategy consultant, and Executive Director of Partners in Education in Santa Barbara. Her primary role is to coach stewards to grow their community-engaged learning capacity and grow the interconnectedness of the CommunityShare network. Using best practices and sharing tested tools, Michelle helps communities increase connections, reduce duplicative work, identify trends and gaps, and organize the human and financial capital of a community in ways that meet the needs of learners and partners.

     

  • Bryan Rafael Falcón
    Bryan Rafael Falcón Organizational Development Strategist

    Bryan guides our organizational development and growth strategy. Bryan is an award-winning theater director and edtech entrepreneur with a passion for both education and scaling successful organizations. In addition to working with CommunityShare, Bryan is the Artistic and Managing Director at The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre in Tucson, Arizona. The theater is dedicated to telling diverse stories that raise challenging questions with a focus on language, music and physical theatre for all ages.  Prior to founding and running the non-profit, Bryan was Co-founder and CEO at Haiku Learning (now PowerSchool Learning). At the time of acquisition in 2016, Haiku served over 5 million parents, teachers and students across the world with its elegant user experience. Prior to Haiku Learning, Bryan was Co-founder and President at LightSky, an outsourced web IT company. LightSky grew into the largest company of its class in its region and served a wide variety of clients including school districts, hospitals, and Fortune 500 companies. When not directing and designing for theater, Bryan loves playing board games with his family, reading and hiking.

  • Melinda Englert
    Melinda Englert Director of Communications

    Melinda guides CommunityShare’s communications, marketing, and outreach efforts. Melinda developed a passion for education and community connection from a young age thanks to her family and educators.This led her to obtain her B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Journalism from the University of Arizona and to spend more than a decade working and volunteering in youth and community development, education, and literacy nonprofits in Arizona and Colorado. Melinda believes in the power of stories and enjoys design, writing, photography, and video as opportunities to share stories that build connections, collaboration, and possibilities. Born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, Melinda enjoys hiking, bike riding, gardening, reading, traveling, and spending time with friends and family (especially outside).

  • Arelys Alcozer
    Arelys Alcozer Program Manager

    Arelys supports our members and educators as they implement CommunityShare’s services and tools across their networks to advance their community-engaged learning initiatives. She is a proud first-generation college graduate with a Master of Arts in Teaching and is passionate about education, community, and the transformative power of relationships. In her previous role at Gradient Learning, she coached school leaders through change management as they redesigned learning for their students and provided professional development to hundreds of educators on implementing project-based learning and whole student education in their classrooms. As an adjunct professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, she teaches and supports fellow educators in their professional growth, specifically around teaching English as a Second Language. She is most proud of her former students, who are now young adults pursuing degrees, careers, and personal passions. She finds joy in reading, crafting, and creating—whether it’s a new project, a meaningful connection, or a space where all voices are valued. In her free time, she loves spending time with her husband and daughter exploring all that Chicago has to offer.

  • Hanna Duker
    Hanna Duker UI/UX Designer

    Hanna guides CommunityShare’s user experience design, shaping and elevating the usability of the CommunityShare platform to better connect educators, partners, and communities. With over 12 years of experience spanning architecture, systems design, and user experience, she brings a deep understanding of how people, places, and technology intersect. She holds a
    master’s degree in architecture from the University of Cape Town, and her background in community-led design informs her human-centered approach to digital products. Outside of work, Hanna is an avid boulderer, trail runner, and illustrator who spends much of her time in South Africa’s Cederberg mountains.

Our Team

CommunityShare was founded by Josh Schachter in collaboration with a passionate group of educators, entrepreneurs, artists, ecologists, nonprofit organizations, technophiles, graduate students, and community leaders.

  • Josh Schachter
    Josh Schachter Director & Founder

    Josh is an educator, visual storyteller and social ecologist. His passion for real-world learning started in high school when he had the opportunity to undertake turtle research in South Carolina and Alabama with herpetologist Jeff Lovich. This field experience led Josh to pursue a career in ecosystem management. He earned a master’s degree in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he explored the role of youth-produced media in supporting personal and community transformation. Over the past 20+ years he has collaborated on community-based media projects with youth, teachers, neighborhood groups, and nonprofit organizations in places ranging from New Delhi to Nigeria. He co-founded VOICES Inc., a nonprofit organization that hired low-income youth to work as journalists to tell the stories of their lives and communities in Tucson. Josh co-founded the Finding Voice program with ELL teacher Julie Kasper in Tucson to support the literacy, multimedia, critical thinking, collaborative, and civic leadership skills of refugee and immigrant students.

  • Michelle Magnusson
    Michelle Magnusson Director of Community Engagement & Strategy
    Michelle leads CommunityShare’s community engagement strategy and work. She has been a teacher, strategy consultant, and Executive Director of Partners in Education in Santa Barbara. Her primary role is to coach stewards to grow their community-engaged learning capacity and grow the interconnectedness of the CommunityShare network. Using best practices and sharing tested tools, Michelle helps communities increase connections, reduce duplicative work, identify trends and gaps, and organize the human and financial capital of a community in ways that meet the needs of learners and partners.

     

  • Bryan Rafael Falcón
    Bryan Rafael Falcón Organizational Development Strategist

    Bryan guides our organizational development and growth strategy. Bryan is an award-winning theater director and edtech entrepreneur with a passion for both education and scaling successful organizations. In addition to working with CommunityShare, Bryan is the Artistic and Managing Director at The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre in Tucson, Arizona. The theater is dedicated to telling diverse stories that raise challenging questions with a focus on language, music and physical theatre for all ages.  Prior to founding and running the non-profit, Bryan was Co-founder and CEO at Haiku Learning (now PowerSchool Learning). At the time of acquisition in 2016, Haiku served over 5 million parents, teachers and students across the world with its elegant user experience. Prior to Haiku Learning, Bryan was Co-founder and President at LightSky, an outsourced web IT company. LightSky grew into the largest company of its class in its region and served a wide variety of clients including school districts, hospitals, and Fortune 500 companies. When not directing and designing for theater, Bryan loves playing board games with his family, reading and hiking.

  • Luke Bultman
    Luke Bultman Product Manager

    Luke operates as our Product Manager, guiding and coaching our product team to turn our visions into reality for CommunityShare and our customers. Luke has spent time leading teams of people and products for over 15 years in both start up and corporate cultures. His diversified experience stretches into the ed tech and entertainment industries. During his career he’s mostly worked on SaaS products that have been built to serve the needs of the customer. A passionate part of his existence is working alongside people, because after all we need people to build tools that ultimately benefit others, our communities and our world.  He greatly enjoys coaching, partnering and rolling up his sleeves to do the work, and building the things that create change in the little and big spaces. Born and raised in Arizona, Luke loves the desert, and can be found wandering its paths running long distances – sometimes with friends, solo or his dogs.  Active in his community, you may see him coaching youth on the soccer field, serving in volunteer roles or traveling with his family.

  • Jil Mackenzie
    Jil Mackenzie Professional Learning Designer

    Jil designs and facilitates professional learning for educators across CommunityShare’s network. A teacher at heart, she earned a Master’s in Secondary English Education from Syracuse University and spent the next decade in middle and high schools across New York. She honed her skills as an educator, instructional coach, and program designer in partnership with EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) and Outward Bound Schools, whose holistic vision of student achievement and active, community-engaged approach to learning directly align with CommunityShare’s mission. Jil believes deeply in the power of education to help us all build a better world and is honored to work alongside educators, students and communities, as we reimagine systems and forge new bonds that enrich us all. In her free time, Jil can be found in the woods of Wilmington, DE on a mountain bike, just trying to keep up with her husband and their three year old daughter.

  • Arelys Alcozer
    Arelys Alcozer Program Manager

    Arelys supports our members and educators as they implement CommunityShare’s services and tools across their networks to advance their community-engaged learning initiatives. She is a proud first-generation college graduate with a Master of Arts in Teaching and is passionate about education, community, and the transformative power of relationships. In her previous role at Gradient Learning, she coached school leaders through change management as they redesigned learning for their students and provided professional development to hundreds of educators on implementing project-based learning and whole student education in their classrooms. As an adjunct professor at the City Colleges of Chicago, she teaches and supports fellow educators in their professional growth, specifically around teaching English as a Second Language. She is most proud of her former students, who are now young adults pursuing degrees, careers, and personal passions. She finds joy in reading, crafting, and creating—whether it’s a new project, a meaningful connection, or a space where all voices are valued. In her free time, she loves spending time with her husband and daughter exploring all that Chicago has to offer.

  • Melinda Englert
    Melinda Englert Director of Communications

    Melinda guides CommunityShare’s communications, marketing, and outreach efforts. Melinda developed a passion for education and community connection from a young age thanks to her family and educators.This led her to obtain her B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Journalism from the University of Arizona and to spend more than a decade working and volunteering in youth and community development, education, and literacy nonprofits in Arizona and Colorado. Melinda believes in the power of stories and enjoys design, writing, photography, and video as opportunities to share stories that build connections, collaboration, and possibilities. Born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, Melinda enjoys hiking, bike riding, gardening, reading, traveling, and spending time with friends and family (especially outside).

  • David Nixon
    David Nixon Software Engineer

    David oversees CommunityShare’s online platform and other tech-related needs. A full-stack developer formerly at IBM, he blends product thinking with hands-on engineering to keep things reliable, secure, and easy to use. Outside of code, David enjoys sewing,reading sci-fi novels, playing board games, and all The Legend of Zelda games.

  • Jill Helme
    Jill Helme Director of Operations

    Jill directs CommunityShare’s daily business and administrative operations and works closely with all staff to advance Community Share’s mission and strategic goals.  Jill began her career as a high school language arts and math teacher where she learned that a true robust, quality education required both in-school and out-of-school programming. She went on to earn her Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania and has spent the past 15+ years leading nonprofits focused on youth-based workforce development, music and arts education, and afterschool programs. In her spare time Jill enjoys traveling and camping with her family, running, and making ice cream. 

  • Hanna Duker
    Hanna Duker UI/UX Designer

    Hanna guides CommunityShare’s user experience design, shaping and elevating the usability of the CommunityShare platform to better connect educators, partners, and communities. With over 12 years of experience spanning architecture, systems design, and user experience, she brings a deep understanding of how people, places, and technology intersect. She holds a
    master’s degree in architecture from the University of Cape Town, and her background in community-led design informs her human-centered approach to digital products. Outside of work, Hanna is an avid boulderer, trail runner, and illustrator who spends much of her time in South Africa’s Cederberg mountains.

Our Board

  • Jenny Volpe
    Jenny Volpe Secretary

    Jenny is a writer, strategist-consultant, teacher, and community builder working with nonprofits and initiatives in the education sector. She is passionate about raising our collective wisdom, compassion, connection, and consciousness, and works with mission-driven organizations to unlock potential and create more impact. She specializes in creating transformational learning and development experiences that elevate our human potential and create meaningful change. Jenny is the former CEO of Make Way for Books and led the organization for 13 years catalyzing innovation and co-creating award-winning impact with an incredible team. She is a Teach for America alum passionate about educational equity and believes in the power of education as a means for social change. She has taught everything from PreK to 10th grade and has worked to develop and launch innovative community-based educational programs and initiatives in the U.S. and beyond.

  • Chelsea Waite
    Chelsea Waite Chair

    Chelsea is Senior Researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Along with partners at Transcend and dozens of other collaborating organizations, Chelsea leads the Canopy project to build better collective knowledge on K–12 innovation from a diverse set of schools around the country. Before joining CRPE, Chelsea was an education research fellow at the Christensen Institute studying innovative school models, school change, student agency, and models for peer-to-peer support in K–12. Prior, she built partnerships and designed learning programs at Digital Promise, and taught English at the postsecondary level in the northeast of Brazil. Chelsea holds a BA in History from Brown University and an MSt in Social Innovation from Cambridge University. She is also accredited by the Partnership Brokers Association as a facilitator of multi-stakeholder collaborations.

  • Miho Kubagawa
    Miho Kubagawa Director

    Miho is a connector of people, ideas and resources. She is currently the Organization Building Lead at Organizer Zero, where she coaches and supports parent leaders who are launching their own non-profits to lead parent-led movements in their respective communities. Her prior experiences include serving on the founding team of a new ed tech startup, managing a national portfolio of innovative school models, launching a teacher residency program, and teaching middle school math. She received her doctorate in Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) from Harvard University, her B.S. in Economics from Duke University and her M.S.T. in Adolescent Education from Pace University. She currently serves on the boards of Breakthrough Collaborative, CommunityShare and New Schools for Alabama. In her free time, she enjoys watching sports, writing, and pitching the random ideas in her head to anyone who will listen.

Our Advisory Council

  • Antonio Parés
    Antonio Parés

    Antonio Parés is the founder of Walnut Hill Workshop, a post-org strategy studio helping schools, funders, and civic organizations build systems that work in motion. His work includes the Charter Comms Hub, serving 40+ charter networks, and strategy resets for Brightbeam, Summit Public Schools, and One Stone Ventures. A former teacher, policy leader, and funder, Antonio has launched funds, drafted ballot measures, and led statewide education initiatives. His focus now is scaling usable work that travels—tools and frameworks that help others build what matters. He also writes BullshitED, an editorial platform calling out dysfunction in education and civic life while spotlighting builders doing the real work. A Pahara Fellow and member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, he lives in Denver with his family.

  • Brittany Mauney
    Brittany Mauney

    Brittany Mauney is the Managing Director at the Aspen Institute’s Education & Society Program. Prior to joining Aspen, Brittany was the Chief of Staff at Gradient Learning, led the Educator Data and Analytics team at the Delaware Department of Education, and managed the Teacher Recruitment team at DC Public Schools. She began her career as a high school math teacher in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Brittany seeks ways to incorporate data-informed decision-making into strategic planning and day-to-day operations. Brittany earned her EdM in Education Policy and Management at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an EdM in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston University, and a BS in Business from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, daughter, and golden retriever.

  • Brian Brady
    Brian Brady

    Brian Brady is a civic strategist and education innovator with 30 years of experience transforming youth engagement across America. As CEO and Executive Director of Mikva Challenge for 21 years, he grew the organization from serving 40 students in Chicago to reaching over 150,000 students annually across 15 states, expanding the budget from $120,000 to $6 million while pioneering the Action Civics movement. Prior to Mikva Challenge, Brian worked as a teacher and youth worker on Chicago’s South and West Sides. His work has been recognized by leading civic education researchers as exemplary best practice, fundamentally changing how young people engage in democratic processes. Now as Founder and Principal of Youth Engage Consulting, Brian helps organizations strengthen and scale impactful programs while building bridges between families, nonprofits, schools, and communities to advance equity and justice.

  • Jane Quinn
    Jane Quinn

    Jane Quinn is a social worker and youth worker with over five decades of professional experience, including direct service with children and families, program development, fundraising, grantmaking, research, and advocacy. From 2000 through 2018, she served as the Vice President for Community Schools at Children’s Aid, where she directed the National Center for Community Schools. Prior to that, she served as Program Director for the DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund; directed a national study of youth organizations for the Carnegie Corporation of New York; and served as Program Director for Girls Clubs of America. She was the principal author of the 1992 Carnegie study entitled A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours and the co-author of three books on community schools, including the 2023 volume entitled The Community Schools Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy. Jane has a master’s in social work from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in urban education from the City University of New York.