Marnie Masuda-Cleveland, Executive Director
As Executive Director of The Creative Core, Marnie Masuda-Cleveland draws upon her 25 years of classroom teaching experience (K-university) to determine the best possible solutions for individual schools and districts. She has assembled an unparalleled team of innovative educational game changers from across the US to provide mentorship, professional development and pedagogical guidance to Creative Core clients. Ms. Masuda-Cleveland holds a Master’s of Arts in English and a post-baccalaureate in secondary English/Language Arts Education from University of California, Irvine.
During her years in California, she was awarded the Golden Bell for Excellence in Education, and was the recipient of the 1998 Buck Institute for Education Fellowship to design and implement project-based, “college-and-career-ready” curriculum. She served on the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative, and assisted high-tech industry leaders Autodesk and Broderbund to develop effective “21st Century Skills,” and internet workshops for teachers back when AOL was the hot new thing. During her sixteen years as an educator in Hawai’i schools, she created and piloted the first project-based interdisciplinary curriculum at Seabury Hall, a “Blue Ribbon”, college-preparatory school on Maui.
From 2007-2015, she spearheaded and directed several groundbreaking literacy-based programs for teachers and students at UH Maui College. From 2011-2015, she served as Co-Director and Director of the Hawaii Writing Project, in which capacity she developed and implemented a new strategic, scalable professional development model to improve CCSS-based literacy instruction and better serve the needs of students across the state. In 2014, Ms. Masuda-Cleveland was honored as one of the University of Hawaii Community College system’s “50 Finest” for her contribution to literacy education.
Since founding The Creative Core in 2015, Marnie has served on the National Faculty for the Buck Institute for Education, coordinated Professional Development for the Hawai’i Writing Project. Marnie currently supports the integration of best practices in reading and writing instruction, and Social Emotional Learning, as Hawaii's Literacy Specialist for The Center for the Collaborative Classroom. She is proud to serve the state of Hawaii as a Learning Consultant and Representative for Heinemann, Americas's most trusted educational publisher.