Odette Piñeiro-Caballero

Dr. Odette Piñeiro Caballero has over twenty-five years of experience in community development, enhancing the quality of public, private, and non-traditional education (innovation, policy development, administration) in the United States, Central America, and Puerto Rico. She has designed, implemented, and evaluated programs which stimulate collaborations to promote social justice through formal and informal education of administrators, teachers, and students at all levels. In her earliest professional experience, she enabled children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers east of the Mississippi River to pursue an undergraduate education, many of whom are now leaders in their businesses, organizations, and communities. She later designed and managed programs for Brown University’s Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory, creating new alliances for grant writing and research. After such experiences, she was hired to become lead consultant for various national public and private organizations such as USAID, PARCC, CRH Consulting, Lightspan Corporation, Microsoft, and the Commission on Education of the Puerto Rico Senate, among others. Dr. Piñero was a pioneer in the Development of the Techno pedagogical Profile of the Puerto Rico Public Education System and the credentials by competencies to the system because of the implementation of the DE-Innova Project. This project involved the participation of over 25,000 educators in the system. On the other hand, she continues to be contracted by the Associate Secretary of Special Education and the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration providing vocational evaluation services and training respectively to students. In addition, she has extensive experience volunteering her time in secular, as well as religious organizations, including founding the Centro del Estudiante y Maestro Investigador (Center for Teacher and Student as Researcher) in 2013, a non-profit impacting high school graduation, work-based competencies, and advocacy for adult learners (www.cemipr.org).

In 2009, and after confirmation by the Puerto Rico Senate, Dr. Piñeiro Caballero was appointed as Puerto Rico Secretary of Education, managing the Puerto Rico Department of Education (PRDE), for the next nine months. Before this government experience, in 2008, Piñeiro incorporated Global Education Exchange Opportunities Inc. (GEEO Inc.), to impact social transformation of communities for equal participation as global citizens. Currently, GEEO, Inc. continues to lead work teams hired by various organizations to identify, implemen