Education Leaders Patty Quinones and George Welsh Set to Join CEI Team

 Expanding School and District Support for Innovation and System Transformation

CEI announced today that Patty Quinones and George Welsh will be joining CEI as Senior Partners, focused on deepening and expanding school and district support for innovation, leadership, and system transformation in Colorado and beyond.

Welsh joins from Cañon City School District, where he served as superintendent of schools since 2015. Quinones joins from St. Vrain Valley Schools, where she served as assistant superintendent of innovation since 2016.

Quinones brings 25 years of experience in education, with 17 as a district executive and high school principal in St. Vrain, including her accomplished leadership in the design and expansion of its Innovation Center, Race to the Top grant, and system-wide P-TECH and STEM programming. Moving forward, Quinones will focus on coaching and support for career-connected learning, high school redesign, and industry and community partnerships.

“Throughout my career, students have always been at the core of why we would implement a program, a practice, an opportunity. My passion for innovation has allowed me to be a catalyst for change in the educational sector. Recently one of our first student-designers gave a talk in which she said, ‘I am just an ordinary girl, who had extraordinary experiences!’ I felt at that moment I had done my job in a system. Now, I am excited to be joining the CEI team and continue to contribute to education more broadly.”

– Patty Quinones

With 26 years as a superintendent of rural school districts as well as education leadership and training in Arizona, Welsh brings his focus on leading for student-centered change, integrating social emotional development, and partnering with industry to ensure schools deliver relevance, opportunity, and growth to rural Colorado students and communities. Moving forward, Welsh will focus on his continued work to co-lead CEI’s Rural Superintendent Academy and RSA alumni network; providing executive coaching to senior district leaders; working with school boards; and deepening support for career pathways and other systems alignment initiatives.

“Individuals rarely have the opportunity to work for an organization that so closely aligns to their personal core beliefs. I’m thrilled and honored to be part of the CEI family and I look forward to learning, growing, and supporting leaders in becoming the best version of themselves, for the benefit of their children!”

– George Welsh

“We are honored to welcome George and Patty and to bring on such notable leaders in the education and business community to accelerate our mission for reimagining public education. Much of CEI’s 15-year history has centered around identifying exemplar districts and supporting other education leaders to learn from them. These two leaders strengthen our ability to help districts in and outside Colorado learn from key architects in the remarkable systems they each worked to build and lead.”

– Rebecca Holmes