Current Role: Executive Director of Nowell Academy

Fellowship Role: Executive Director of Nowell Academy

Jessica Waters is the Executive Director of Nowell Academy.

In this role, Jessica provides academic, financial, and school operation oversight. She also manages talent development, and board relations. Nowell Academy is a small public charter school in Providence, Rhode Island with a mission to ensure that Rhode Island’s pregnant, parenting and underserved youth graduate from high school with the knowledge and skills they need to be prepared for success in college, career and family life. Jessica has been with Nowell for 4 years serving as the prior academic dean and school principal. Jessica led Nowell’s design team through Barr Foundation’s Engage New England: doing highschool differently grant securing over 800K to support school turnaround efforts. During this time, Jessica and her team dramatically transformed the academic program from a drop-in tutoring model to a relevant rigorous, project based, personalized, model. Jessica also served as an educator specialist at the RI Department of education and as the Director of Next Generation Partnerships at Rhode Island Mayoral Academies. Jessica taught science at the secondary level. During this time, Jessica was selected to represent RI as the RI 2013 State Teacher of the Year.

Jessica holds an M.Ed. from Walden University, and a B.A. from Rhode Island College in Secondary Education in Science.