S. Kwesi Rollins
Director, Leadership Programs
Institute for Educational Leadership
rollinsk@iel.org
202-822-8405 x 130
A member of IEL’s Senior Leadership Team, Kwesi Rollins guides IEL’s portfolio of programs designed to develop and support leaders with a particular emphasis on Family and Community Engagement, Early Childhood Education and Community-based Leadership Development. Kwesi directs several projects including the Kellogg Leadership for Community Change/Community Learning Exchange Project; the District Leaders Network on Family and Community Engagement a peer learning network designed to develop and deepen the capacity of district level family engagement leaders. He also directs the Early Childhood Community Schools Linkages Project and the Mind in the Making-Community Schools Project. Funded by the Kellogg Foundation, these early childhood projects are designed to demonstrate strategic linkages between early childhood education opportunities and effective community schools that lead to better results for vulnerable children, and lay a foundation for success in school and life.
Kwesi has years of experience working with local communities and state agencies to improve multi-agency service delivery systems supporting children, youth and families. Mr. Rollins provided technical assistance and training to a range of state and county agencies, school districts, local schools and community-based organizations in technical assistance and training projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Working with young people is also a personal passion for Kwesi - he has special expertise in resiliency and youth development. He is President of the Parklands Community Center Board of Directors; has been recognized as the Big Brother of the Year in the District of Columbia; and is an ex-officio member of the Board of Directors of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the National Capitol Area, serving for 7 years as Vice-President for Program Services. He completed work on his MSW degree in 1996 at the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Social Work where he was a Maternal and Child Health Leadership Training Fellow.