Teaching Strategies Employee Spotlight: Michael, Business Development Manager
Michael began his career in education as both a high school history teacher and athletic coach. Despite his busy schedule as an educator and coach, Michael was determined to earn his master’s degree in United States History, which he achieved during night and summer classes.
Looking for a change, he made the decision to transition out of the field of education and into sales. Regardless of his career change, he has stayed true to his background in education as a sales professional who specializes in educational publishing. Now, Michael is the business development manager here at Teaching Strategies. In his role, he is responsible for selling curriculum, assessment, and Professional Development offerings to public school districts, Head Start programs and early childhood non-profit organizations in the Northeast region.
Recently, we asked Michael to share his thoughts on work and life at Teaching Strategies.
What is your favorite part about working with Teaching Strategies customers?
Our customers are dedicated to improving student outcomes. In addition, they are appreciative of our individual and company efforts to support their education goals and build teacher capacity. Furthermore, our customers routinely inform me that they appreciate our good, “old-fashioned” customer service, and this serves to create TS Champions who will continue to brag about our various products and services.
Tell us about your role at Teaching Strategies. What does your day-to-day look like?
In terms of my day-to-day activities, this can vary quite a bit. For example, I am often on the road to meet with customers at their school or office and discuss their early childhood curriculum and professional development training plans for the new 2025-2026 school year. At other times, I may be found working from my home office, attending company meetings, doing lots of outreach, and checking in with my customers to listen and learn more as it relates to their vision and plans. My mantra is to focus on taking care of one good customer at a time. This upcoming week, I will be attending the annual 3-day New England Head Start Conference and Exhibit with two colleagues from other teams in support of this well-attended meeting. What I particularly enjoy about attending conferences and exhibits is that it provides us with yet another opportunity to answer customer questions face to face while also highlighting several new print and digital offerings for this loyal customer segment.
Tell us about a time you have really been able to see your impact in your work or with our customers.
It is an honor to be routinely asked by our good Head Start customers to serve as a Guest Reader in their preschool classrooms. My goal is to be viewed by my customers as a trusted business resource and not as just another vendor.
What do you love most about the products and services we offer to our customers?
We strive as a company to give early childhood educators their Sunday nights back so that they are not overburdened. Our products are designed to be both easy to use and easy to implement, which should not be overlooked. In addition, I would be remis if I did not point out how the PD Teacher Membership, the Coach Membership, the PDTM Plus subscriptions, the Teacher Acceleration Program, and the Hub are all excellent examples of how Teaching Strategies continues to go above and beyond in order to support our Early Childhood customers. These various offerings are all designed to help our customers build their capacity while also learning best practices that will help them implement our solutions with fidelity.
What do you feel sets our products apart from competitors’?
One of the key differentiators for our various print and digital offerings is the fact that they are both research-based as well as research-proven. It’s also a key difference that our colleagues on the Partner Success Team continually go above and beyond in order to support our good customers in ways both large and small.
