Dr. Rhema Stradford-Dai
Early Childhood General Education ’10, Progressive Leadership '17
If you’re ready to move beyond someone else’s story of you, if you’re ready to step into your leadership with clarity and conviction, reach out. I’ll walk with you. I’ll challenge you. I’ll help you rise. Because if I can do it—against the odds, through the criticism, in full purpose— you can, too.
Dr. Rhema Stradford-Dai is a professor and program coordinator of educational leadership at a college within the City University of New York and the founder and CEO of Elevate Education Consulting, which works toward elevating women’s voice and presence as educational leaders who lead with compassion, curiosity, optimism, love, confidence, and an equity lens. At the same time, she recently defended her doctoral dissertation at the University of Southern California (which is now published) and earned her EdD in May 2025.
At first, Dr. Stradford-Dai didn’t know she would find her path in the field of education. As an undergraduate pre-law student, she started her career with two internships in national and international politics—in the West Wing with Al Gore and at the United Nations Security Council. After experiencing what working in politics was like, she realized that she wanted to be “much closer to the ground and the heartbeat of what was going on,” and decided to change her career trajectory with a master’s degree in education.
Interested in progressive approaches to teaching and learning, she soon transferred from a local college to Bank Street, which she describes as the “turning point” in her life.
“To know that you can learn from children, study what they’re doing, and extend the funds of knowledge within them was just extraordinary to me. It changed how I think about educational policy, adult development, and education as a whole,” she said.
Following her Bank Street fieldwork —which she called “my own little organic laboratory to try all the things that I was learning”—Dr. Stradford-Dai graduated with an MSEd in Early Childhood General Education and started teaching at Trinity Lutheran School and later at an affluent independent school in New York City that provided what she described as a two-pronged continuation of her education.
First, she got to see the progressive approach at work and how it enriched the lives of her students. Secondly, the experience confirmed to her that students of color need to see educators of color. At her predominantly White school, she was routinely mistaken for a driver or a caregiver, and she often felt the need to validate her role by showing her ID. At the same time, the parents of the few children of color in her class often thanked her for her presence as a role model.
Dr. Stradford-Dai said, “It was the beginning of my thinking about diversity and inclusion for very young children.” That realization motivated her to help found a school within the Ascend Public Charter Schools network in Brooklyn, where she served as the founding dean of instruction and dean of students. She then became the founding head of school at Empowerment Academy in Jersey City.
After a few years in Shanghai working as a head teacher at Concordia International School Shanghai, she relocated to California where she became a principal at Aspire Public Schools in Oakland. She also taught undergraduates online at Post University and then moved to Texas to serve as the head of division at Greenhill School in Addison.
With all of this leadership and school-building experience, Dr. Stradford-Dai returned to New York City and focused on growing her fledgling business, Elevate Education Consulting, an organization that supports women in educational leadership through workshops, speaking engagements, and one-on-one coaching. Through her professional experiences and qualitative research, she’s noted that many women of color have been overlooked, underestimated, or misread.
“If others try to mute your voice, speak louder, with wisdom and grace. If others don’t celebrate your success—celebrate yourself, and keep building. At the center of it all, keep your purpose for positively impacting the lives of children as your motivation,” she said. “I mentor leaders because I’ve been through the fire. I’ve been misunderstood. I’ve been built from the ground up by grace and grit. And now, I’m here to help others walk boldly into who they were always meant to be. If you’re ready to move beyond someone else’s story of you, if you’re ready to step into your leadership with clarity and conviction, reach out. I’ll walk with you. I’ll challenge you. I’ll help you rise. Because if I can do it—against the odds, through the criticism, in full purpose— you can, too.”
As Elevate Education’s CEO, Dr. Stradford-Dai continues to emphasize the importance of creating environments where children and educators are honored and where they can thrive and be heard.
“I hope that one day all schools will be sacred spaces, untouched by policies that have a political leaning. I advocate very strongly for all who are from different marginalized groups to have a voice and an impact in education,” she said. “We need diversity of thought, diversity in leadership, and diverse questions and challenges to prepare the next generation for jobs that we don’t even understand yet, things that we can’t even imagine. We need to seek freedom for all children and the adult educators in their lives.”
To hear more about her experience at Bank Street, watch these highlights from our recent interview.