Interviewer: What is your name?
Teresa: Teresa Roberts
Interviewer: What is your position at CSA?
Teresa: Senior Director, Alignment Services
Interviewer: What does that position entail?
Teresa: I oversee the Alignment Services department, which means making sure that our fantastic Alignment Managers have all the tools they need to follow through on projects for a diverse range of clients and project types. Unlike the Curriculum Development or Design/Digital departments, Alignment projects tend to move fast and furious, often with turnaround times of just a couple of weeks. We are used to managing upward of 20–30 of them at once during our peak times. So, my job is largely helping to figure out exactly what a client needs, setting up the price and materials for the projects, and then helping find the best folks to handle the job. Mostly, it means herding cats, spinning plates, juggling balls, and any other metaphor you want to toss in there for “handling lots of stuff at the same time.”
Interviewer: How did you become a part of CSA?
Teresa: I fell into Educational Publishing completely by chance. After my entire team was laid off due to budget cuts at my former employer, I began freelancing and looking around for some part-time work to fill in the blanks. I got a temp job typing and answering the phones at CSA 15 years ago. It wasn’t long until that job turned into a full-time position, and I started taking on more and more responsibilities. Soon, I was exclusively managing all of the alignment and correlations projects. Fast-forward a few years, and the Alignment Services department is still going strong and continues to grow!
Interviewer: What is the best part of your job?
Teresa: I love it when we can solve a problem for a client that they didn’t know could be solved, which makes their lives easier in the process.
Interviewer: What do you wish people knew about your work at CSA?
Teresa: That the Alignment Services department exists! We’re one of the only educational publishing vendors that has a department devoted to correlations and alignment–helping clients do everything from winning adoptions to adapting programs to meet new state standards, to deep dives into program evaluations and rubrics. If you can think of an alignment project, we have probably done it or something very similar.
Interviewer: What do you wish schools focused on more in terms of education and why?
Teresa: I get to see a wide variety of textbooks in my department, and I am so glad to see publishers turning a wider lens on antiracism, social-emotional learning, and neurodiversity in the programs that we evaluate and align. I can only hope that expanded focus continues to take hold in classrooms at all age and grade levels.
Interviewer: What are three interesting facts about you?
Teresa: One of my favorite hobbies is competitive puzzling. The competitions usually involve word and logic puzzles and sometimes last for several hours at a time. I love a good Reuben sandwich, which was invented in my hometown of Omaha, NE (sorry, New Yorkers, it’s true), and I even have a rating scale for them. One of my bucket list items is visiting every U.S. national park. My partner and I are headed to Colorado this fall to check a couple more off the list!
Click here to learn more about Teresa!
