Molly McCloskey, founder and executive director of Strategic Questions Consulting, is a results-driven educator committed to asking the best questions to help your school, district, association or organization move forward to meet the needs of your students, staff, and clients. With expertise in education, social justice, and equity issues for children and adults, Molly provides a mirror reflecting your current practices for deeper understanding and a window into next steps customized to your strengths and needs.
Molly is an innovative leader with proven ability to collaborate, engage, and inspire through shared accountability and a compelling vision. She has worked in every level of education from early childhood through graduate school in school based, university, association, and nonprofit management roles and serves on several advisory boards, but in her heart, she is still an elementary school counselor committed to equity and a whole child education for each child.
As CEO and President of Operation Respect, Molly reinvigorated a non-profit committed to safer, more compassionate learning environments around the world. Over 60% of elementary school counselors in Israel use Don’t Laugh at Me, the cornerstone social and emotional learning curriculum she revised in 2016. Founded by Peter Yarrow, of Peter Paul and Mary, Operation Respect led anti-bullying efforts in the United States, Israel, Palestine, Japan, Hong Kong, and Ukraine.
While co-chair of Governor Martin O’Malley’s Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in Maryland, Molly increased access to federally funded meals in all 26 counties through a public-private partnership of state agencies and non-profit organizations. Using data driven outreach strategies to achieve specific food security goals, Ms. McCloskey and her team closed the gap in breakfast access for tens of thousands of Maryland students while providing a process model for other states.
Challenged to move from success to significance, Molly and her colleagues developed the Whole Child Initiative at ASCD, which she later led as Managing Director. Committed to ensuring each child, in each school, in each community is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged, the initiative changed the conversation about education in states and nations around the world.
Ms. McCloskey has presented across the United States, Germany, and Israel. She has written and been interviewed about hunger, poverty, school reform, and whole child education in the Baltimore Sun, Miami Herald, USA Today, Edutopia and the Chicago Tribune. Her specialities include anti-bias and equity efforts in schools and other organizations, school/organizational climate and culture, cultural competence, social and emotional learning, a whole child approach to education, leading change, and evidence based planning for sustainable change.
Strategic Questions Consulting
Strategic Questions Consulting, founded by Molly McCloskey, recognizes your strengths as the basis for responding to your needs. Rooted in Fran Peavey’s concept of strategic questioning, we believe that powerful consulting relationships include both a mirror of current practices for reflection and introspection and a window into new ideas, improved practices, and expanded understanding.
Strategic questioning provokes change. It challenges the status quo without blame or fault finding, focusing instead on solutions which are contextual, achievable, and sustainable. Yet it pulls no punches. Strategic questioning is about truth-telling and confronting bias, blind spots, and complacency.
Are you meeting the needs of the whole child – the health, safety, engagement, support, and challenge needs? How do you know? What have you done to do so? Who have you engaged in the process and how are you partnering? What have you taught your students so that they may be empowered to recognize their own needs and informed about ways to respond?
Is your bias showing? Is your school/district/organization inclusive and culturally responsive? Are your daily practices and core policies equitable? How do they reflect your beliefs about your students, clients, and/or staff members?
Let’s find the answers together.