Expert in Curriculum & Instruction ✦ Dynamic Speaker
Design-Focused Leader ✦ Fluent in Database & Technical Work

A Philadelphia-based Professional




















Biography

Dr. Joshua Taton, is a recognized expert in curriculum-use, coaching, and educational leadership. After working as an actuarial consultant, he taught middle and high school mathematics and has now worked in education and education leadership for more than two decades. He aligns and integrates partnerships and programs to reverse trends of declining academic achievement and establish pathways of continued growth. Dr. Taton also serves on national boards with other prominent leaders, speaks at conferences, and publishes on his research and leadership. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Yale University, and a Master's in educational technology and a Ph.D. in teaching, learning, and leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.

Guiding Professional Values

My professional work is guided by these values, to which I deeply commit:

  • Transparent Communication: Mindset and strategy benefit from earnest dialogue, including humbly owning possibilities and pitfalls. Team members are more effective, together, when they trust each other and regard each other as honest, credible, authentic.

  • Leadership with Empathy: Work is—and should be—emotional. Passionless enterprises are rarely successful. To cultivate passion, to motivate a team, it is necessary to feel and exhibit empathy for the lived experiences, the successes and challenges, of our colleagues.

  • Design-Focused Thinking: The essence of design is gathering data and iterating cycles of problem-solving. Design-focused thinking places stakeholders, not the product, at the center of the conversation. To design well, one must listen well and deeply.

In addition to my own workplace learning, here are two thinkers from whom I have derived these principles:

  • Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, teaches us the importance of intellectual humility in leadership.

  • Edward Tufte, a political scientist (emeritus) at Yale, teaches us how to tell complex narratives with efficient and effective visual designs.

Resume

JAT CV 2021.05.11 No Address.pdf

Sample Work

The frames below are clickable links to some of the websites I have created, including the homepage to my educational consulting services.