On WestEd’s Postsecondary Pathways and Career Mobility team, Svetlana Darche is responsible for co-leading work in career-related education, workforce development, and adult education, including evaluation, policy research, needs assessment, technical assistance, and materials and tool development.
Darche has extensive experience in evaluation, strategic planning, program design, and building of cross-sector collaborations for system change and program improvement. She has also developed an extensive array of tools and materials to promote career-related education reforms.
Darche’s work focuses on identifying the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for college and career readiness, developing tools to assess needed skills, and strengthening in-school and work-based strategies to facilitate skill attainment. Currently she works with the 10 community colleges in the San Diego/Imperial County (CA) region to strengthen career pathways and improve career exploration, work-based learning, and employment services.
Previously she worked with the Tennessee Department of Education on the development of a work-based learning system for the state and has successfully managed numerous large, multi-stakeholder efforts requiring facilitation and synthesis of diverse perspectives.
Darche has a particular interest in promoting college and career readiness and the development of transferable essential skills in STEM fields, through GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment), an international, hands-on youth citizen science program. She serves as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on three GLOBE-related projects.
Darche has provided career development services in private practice and worked extensively with immigrant populations. She began her career with the U.S. General Accounting Office as an evaluator of federal programs.