Itamar Harari, Ph.D.

Dr. Itamar Harari has been leading and consulting evaluation projects in both public and non-profit organizations since 1997. He developed the foundation of his research and evaluation skills at the University of California, Santa Barbara, while attending graduate school and managing a four-year county-wide evaluation project in the area of juvenile delinquency prevention. Since then he has managed and lead evaluation of delinquency prevention projects in multiple settings, including out-of-school and in-school programs.

In 2001, Dr. Harari co-founded the educational research consulting firm, H•E•A•R•T in Education, which provides evaluation and organizational consulting to educational institutions, including universities, schools, after-school programs, and other non-profit organizations. Dr. Harari specializes in creating relevant and feasible evaluation plans that include both quantitative and qualitative research methods and which meet the needs of program providers, as well as funders. He facilitates comprehensive evaluation processes that actively involve a variety of stakeholders (i.e., program administrators, front-line staff, parents, children, community members, and funders) in a process of Continuous Program Improvement. He works both locally and internationally with diverse types of organizations, including schools, out-of-school programs, and community-based organizations.

Most recently, Dr. Harari, along with his wife, has founded the Agoura Hills Family Charter School, in Agoura Hills, California. This school is based on individual learning styles and principles of Compassionate Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

Brenda Harari, Ph.D.

Dr. Brenda Harari began working in after school programs in 1988. After working as a program leader, site manager, program director, and administrator, Dr. Harari went on to develop an internship-model of staff training and development for college students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she designed and taught school-age care courses for five years.

From 1997-2005 Brenda worked at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) with the Collaborative After School Project (CASP) and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) at the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research Center (BEAR) in conjunction with the California Department of Education (CDE) where she developed a series of award-winning manuals describing best practices for integrating college students in after school programs and contributed to the development of a series of after-school program curriculum guides designed to integrate the Academic Content Standards in after-school programs. In this capacity she also contributed to the development of an outcomes- and standards-based assessment instrument for after school programs aligning with the Desired Results of the California Department of Education. During this time Dr. Harari traveled throughout California developing and delivering training and technical assistance for all of these materials and resources.

Dr. Harari sat on the Executive Board of Directors for the California School Age Consortium, the only statewide advocacy organization representing the school age field in California, and is currently a Senior Professor at Cambridge College, Ontario campus, based in Boston, Massachusetts, where she teaches and advises veteran teachers pursuing their Master’s Degrees in Education.

Dr. Harari is a world traveler and has most recently returned from a one-year sabbatical in Australia where she and her husband traveled, consulted with the International Center for Nonviolent Communication, and homeschooled their three boys, ages 6, 8, and 11 years.

Most recently, Dr. Harari, with her husband, has co-founded the Agoura Hills Family Charter School, in Agoura Hills, California.

Dawn Davis, M.A.

Dawn Davis, MA, has been contributing to program evaluation since 2002. She has worked with H.E.A.R.T in Education since 2004, conducting staff trainings and technical assistance, developing materials and supporting data collection, analysis and report writing. Prior to coming to H.E.A.R.T in Education her work for the University of California included a variety of after-school settings where she worked directly with program staff, developed and administered trainings and provided technical assistance. At the University of California at Berkeley she contributed to the Desired Results Developmental Profile project in collaboration with the California Department of Education. She currently works for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a project manager for quality child care research grants. She is involved with conducting research on improving child care quality, providing training opportunities and resources for program staff and family home providers, grant writing and working towards state-wide implementation of quality standards for child care.

Jennifer Schexnayder

Jennifer Schexnayder is a graduate of the UCLA teacher education program and holds a California, Spanish Bilingual Elementary Teaching Credential (CCTS, BCLAD). She began teaching in Los Angeles urban schools in 1989. She later returned to the Graduate School of Education at UCLA to contribute to federally funded projects such as “Best Practices in Early Childhood Education,” where she worked closely with principal investigator, Carollee Howes and “Los Angeles Explores Children’s Early Learning Settings” (LA Excels), an NICHD project lead by Allison Fuligni. She went on to participate in the founding and development of Center X, a teacher education program emphasizing equitable practices and social justice for all children, where she supervised pre-service teachers. Jennifer has worked as an independent consultant, developing commercial curriculum in the areas of both Math and Language Arts. She has a passion for working with disadvantaged and special needs children and adolescents. She tutored and mentored institutionalized teens and is currently supporting autistic and learning disabled children in regular classrooms. She is the mother of three children, ages 8, 11 and 13.