Robin Ahigian is a District Services Senior Program Associate with WestEd’s Quality Schools and Districts team. She has spent nearly 30 years working to improve and enhance the student experience, from the elementary through post-secondary levels. Her experience is both broad and deep in the education landscape, having taught outdoor education and middle school science in the public and private sectors, served in both advisory and administrative roles in higher education, and worked in policy reform at the state and national levels. Ahigian leverages her local, state, and national experience and contacts to create networks that initiate large scale, systems change. She brings dynamic facilitation skills, a data-based research approach, and authentic relational ability to her work.
Ahigian has supported regional projects focused on individualized career planning in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, state-level graduation requirement review and revision in Maryland and New York, and state-level policy and planning focused on flexible pathways in Vermont.
Currently, she supports Boston Public Schools in their implementation of the My Career and Academic Plan (MyCAP), the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) in its review and revision of high school graduation measures, and North Dakota in an evaluation of its Personalized Competency Based Learning Initiative.
Prior to WestEd, Ahigian worked at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as a Communications Manager and then as a Coordinator for the Regional System of Support in the Center for Accountability and Targeted Assistance. She holds a BA from the University of Rhode Island and an MEd from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.