The Stronger Podcast

Mike Montoya
  • 5.0 (4)
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The Stronger Podcast is where the real conversations behind education and nonprofit leadership come alive. Each episode spotlights executives, founders, and purpose-driven leaders who are shaping schools, organizations, and communities across the country. These are the people on the front lines, opening school doors, building new models, and creating opportunities for kids every single day. Leaders share their journeys, the challenges they are navigating right now, and the mission that drives them. It is the kind of candid, heart-level exchange you would normally only hear after hours at a conference. Listeners can expect stories of impact, resilience, vulnerability, and vision. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes raw, always real. This podcast is not about selling products or ideologies. It is about connection. By amplifying the voices of those doing the work, the goal is to build community, spread powerful ideas, and ultimately fuel the larger mission of creating opportunity for millions of children. If you care about education, leadership, and what it takes to build change from the ground up, this is your front-porch seat to the conversation.

  1. 2d ago

    Belief in Kids Is Only the Start: How Teach For America Indianapolis Turns It Into Results with Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn

    Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn, Executive Director of Teach For America Indianapolis, says believing in kids is only the start. The work is turning that belief into clear goals and measurable action for students. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Tenika to talk about how leaders get built in Indianapolis and why teaching may be the best training ground there is. Tenika grew up in Farrell, Pennsylvania, a town of fewer than 5,000 people, and went to parochial school from pre-K through ninth grade. When the family could not afford private school for her and a private college for her older sister, she started tenth grade at a public school for the first time. The classes were bigger and the options fewer, but she found teachers who looked like her and believed she could accomplish anything. That is why she knew she would become a teacher. Today she leads a chapter where alumni run schools and shape policy across the city. They do not always agree on how to get there, she says, but they all believe students deserve to win. Mike and Tenika get into the new Indianapolis Public Education Corporation and how district and charter schools will share facilities and funding. She also explains what a 2023 RAND study found about Teach For America teachers in the city, and the 2030 goal to double student outcomes in reading and math. Tune in to hear how a student who found her calling in a public school classroom is now building the leaders Indianapolis will need next.    Chapters: 🏫 00:49 Meet Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn: from public school student to turnaround school leader🧭 10:24 Teach For America Indianapolis develops leaders, and RAND measured the student results🏛️ 16:12 The new Indianapolis Public Education Corporation takes on shared facilities and funding🤝 21:43 Leaders learn the job by shadowing the people already leading it🍎 28:02 Teaching is the job that prepares you for any role🎯 31:54 Turn belief in kids into goals, systems, shared ownership, and measurable action Links: Website: teachforamerica.org/indianapolis Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tenika-holden-flynn-ed-d-7351519a Teach For America on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/teach-for-america Explore Teach For America Indianapolis and connect with Tenika on LinkedIn to follow the work of building education leaders and student results in the city.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Belief in Kids Is Only the Start: How Teach For America Indianapolis Turns It Into Results with Dr. Tenika Holden-Flynn

  2. Oct 1

    Better Curriculum Isn't Enough: Mapping the Gap Between Common Core and Student Outcomes with Joy Osborne

    Joy Osborne, President and CEO of Student Achievement Partners, says the Common Core era made instructional materials better across the country. Student outcomes have not caught up, and the next decade of her work is about finding out why. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Joy, a former teacher and principal who now leads the national nonprofit founded by the primary writers of the Common Core State Standards, to talk about turning better materials into better outcomes for kids. Joy taught herself to read at three and grew up in Miami Gardens, where the school across the street was not getting students where they needed to go. Her mother turned Joy's test scores into transfers, and she commuted across town from kindergarten on. In a gifted class, she balanced a checkbook against a budget, then walked back into her regular classroom to find everyone doing a worksheet. She has spent her career making sure every kid knows they have agency and the right to ask questions. Mike and Joy dig into why SAP is now mapping the gap between materials and outcomes, and how AI is changing which math and literacy skills students need to master by hand versus understand conceptually. Joy compares it to transportation: you could take a rocket ship everywhere, but sometimes you still need to walk because it's good for your heart. When the first call came about leading SAP, her answer was, "But I'm just a teacher." Tune in to hear what the caller said back, and why Joy now tells the leaders she coaches that who they are is already enough.   Chapters: 🏠 03:08 Joy Osborne never attended school in her own Miami neighborhood 🌈 04:58 Taught herself to read at three and found new places in books ✏️ 10:34 From Summerbridge student to Summerbridge teacher every college summer 🧠 16:20 Critical thinkers are never limited to what someone chooses to tell them 🗺️ 20:01 How the Common Core aligned 40-plus states around the same skills 🧮 24:39 Redesigning high school math for data literacy in the age of AI 🚶 26:26 AI is like transportation: sometimes kids still need to walk 💵 32:07 Schools decide which kids learn to lead and which learn to follow 📈 36:29 Mapping the gap between better materials and better student outcomes 🪞 40:30 Impostor syndrome as a new CEO and learning to ask herself first 🍎 43:33 "But I'm just a teacher": who you already are is enough Links: Website: https://learnwithsap.org/staff/joy-osborne/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joydosborneCompany LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/student-achievement-partners?trk=public_profile_topcard-current-company   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Better Curriculum Isn't Enough: Mapping the Gap Between Common Core and Student Outcomes with Joy Osborne

  3. Sep 24

    The Future Is Not Something We Predict: Venture Philanthropy and Systems Change in a Global Realignment with Shruti Sehra

    Shruti Sehra leads New Profit, a national venture philanthropy, through what she calls the largest global realignment of our lifetimes, driven by rapid innovation and an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth. She is clear that nobody can predict how it ends. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Shruti Sehra, CEO of New Profit, the national nonprofit that has spent nearly three decades putting unrestricted capital and capacity building support behind social entrepreneurs working in education, economic mobility, and democracy. Shruti just marked twenty years at New Profit, and she stepped into the CEO role at the end of a strategic plan cycle rather than the start of one. Her read on this moment is historical. Every eighty to a hundred years the world reorganizes itself, and the pattern arrives with gilded age levels of inequality, a $124 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer, enormous innovation, and collapsing trust in institutions. History can tell us where we are. What it cannot tell us is the outcome, because the outcome depends on what we do. She also tells Mike about growing up as one of four Indian families in a town outside Indianapolis, about mispronouncing her own name until her early forties so she would not disrupt anyone&'s roll call, and about the mother she calls a closet social justice warrior who signed her up at nine to volunteer at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, so she would work for a Black supervisor and see power look different than it did in her town. Listen in for the tension Shruti says every leader is being called to hold right now: the fierce urgency of now alongside the long arc and why she believes that tension, held well, is exactly how we get to write what comes next.  Chapters: 🌏 01:30 Shruti Sehra's story of paradoxes: arriving in the U.S. ⛪ 05:54 Growing up Indian in small town Indiana 🏛️ 11:22 Formative volunteer experience at The Children's Museum 📚 15:06 Going to school in Connecticut 🧭 18:11 The immigrant experience and the importance of community 💡 26:05 Shruti’s leadership at New Profit and the power of unrestricted capital for social entrepreneurs ⏳ 28:45 Navigating the current moment 🔮 30:40 History cannot tell us the outcome, because we create the future 🔺 37:19 The triangle of tension: impact, culture, and sustainability in hard decisions 🤝 40:58 Systems change never happens in isolation, and interdependence is the point Links:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shruti-sehraNew Profit on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/new-profit-inc-Website: newprofit.orgFollow Shruti and New Profit to see where the strategy lands as they think through what the next decade of venture philanthropy asks of the field.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    The Future Is Not Something We Predict: Venture Philanthropy and Systems Change in a Global Realignment with Shruti Sehra

  4. Sep 17

    Education Data Misses the Kids in the Middle: From Community Organizing to Getting Servant Leaders on the Ballot with Leticia de la Vara

    Leticia de la Vara, Chief Impact and Operating Officer at New Politics, spent their school years in the part of the education data nobody writes reports about: the middle. That middle is huge, and Leticia argues it is where the gains are. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Leticia to talk about the move from community organizing to the C-suite, and why servant leaders belong on the ballot. Leticia grew up in Phoenix, raised by a single mother who organized in the Chicano movement while raising four kids. School was somewhere Leticia went during the day, not a place they felt seen. The education happened in the community, knocking doors for Ed Pastor's first congressional campaign and watching Latino organizers run rooms no classroom showed them. Years later, as a single parent, Leticia applied for a job answering phones at a new ASU center founded by the former head of the National Council of La Raza. The center had three people, so Leticia was in every conversation about what to build. They became the staff member who launched the American Dream Academy, which graduated 250 parents in its first offering and still runs at ASU twenty years later. Leticia finished their degree at 33, with their daughter in the crowd. Mike and Leticia get into what demographic data missed about kids like them, and why "at risk" never matched the home they had. They also take on the assumption that politics happens far away in DC, when it mostly lands at the school board and county level. Tune in to hear why Leticia measures leadership by what keeps working after you leave. Chapters: 🌵 01:58 Meet Leticia de la Vara: a Phoenix kid with border town roots 📊 07:03 Nobody writes reports about the kids in the middle ✊ 11:56 The Chicano movement taught what the classroom never did 💛 18:14 What single parents apologize for, and what their kids remember ☎️ 24:29 From answering phones to launching the American Dream Academy 🏷️ 31:06 What at risk data misses about a home full of love 🗳️ 34:31 Servant leaders from classrooms and clinics belong on the ballot 📍 41:01 Most politics is not in DC, it is your school board 🚪 49:03 Show people where the door handle is, then make the door wider Links: Website: https://www.newpoliticsacademy.org LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/leticia-de-la-vara-473b913 New Politics on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/newpoliticsacademy Connect with Leticia on LinkedIn, or visit New Politics to see how they work with servant leaders, including educators, who are thinking about running for office. Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Education Data Misses the Kids in the Middle: From Community Organizing to Getting Servant Leaders on the Ballot with Leticia de la Vara

  5. Sep 10

    Latino Professionals in Corporate America Plan Further Ahead: Why Culture Is an Asset and Not a Liability with Dr. Daniel Custódio

    Dr. Daniel Custódio's research found that Latino professionals plan further ahead than their peers in corporate America, and that the culture they were told to leave at the door is the asset that carries them. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Daniel, transformation executive, professor, and author of Code Mastering, to talk about turning a dissertation into a map for the people coming behind him. Daniel's mother immigrated from Belém do Pará and his father from Portugal. His first memory of school is a kindergarten classroom in Sleepy Hollow where he could not understand the language and did not yet know he was nearsighted, in a district with no ESL program. He got to Hamilton College as a first generation student and spent his summers working as a janitor alongside his father while classmates lined up internships. The call that got him into GE's leadership program he took from a payphone on his lunch break. He went back for the doctorate at 45, with three daughters at home, because he wanted to leave them the research he never had. Mike sat in one of the focus groups. What came out of it is what Daniel calls identity work: being multilingual drew looks at the grocery store as a kid and later became the reason he could move through international markets. Tune in to hear why the messages that mean the most to Daniel are from Latino professionals who buy a second copy of the book for their kids.   Chapters: 👓 02:22 Daniel Custódio started kindergarten unable to see or understand the class 🎓 05:51 First generation at Hamilton with no playbook for internships or networking 📐 09:31 Six Sigma gave him the framework he did not have walking in 👨‍👧‍👧 20:20 Back to school at 45 to leave his daughters a map ♟️ 24:02 Planning several moves ahead as a countermeasure to discrimination at work 🦸 26:00 Speaking Spanish drew stares as a kid and became a career superpower 📖 33:29 Identity work means treating your culture as an asset, not a liability 🎤 38:34 From national slam champion to the TED stage 🤝 41:39 The mentor he wishes he had found fifteen years earlier Links: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/codemastering Website: drdanielcustodio.com TED Talk: youtu.be/qfdYRB0JrMg Connect with Dr. Daniel Custódio on LinkedIn or visit his website to learn more about Code Mastering and the identity work behind it. His TED Talk is the six minute version, built around an orchestra in Paraguay that made its instruments out of what other people threw away.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Latino Professionals in Corporate America Plan Further Ahead: Why Culture Is an Asset and Not a Liability with Dr. Daniel Custódio

  6. Sep 3

    Teacher Attendance Predicts Turnover: The Retention Signal Most School Systems Miss with Dr. Tommy Chang

    Teacher attendance is the clearest early warning sign of teacher turnover, and Dr. Tommy Chang, CEO of New Teacher Center, says most school systems are not watching it. He was not watching it either when he ran Boston Public Schools. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Dr. Tommy Chang, CEO of New Teacher Center and former Superintendent of Boston Public Schools, to talk about what actually keeps new teachers in the classroom. Tommy immigrated from Taiwan at six without a word of English. His first grade teacher, Helen Cowles, taught him to read and write, and he traces his belief in public education back to that classroom. He came into teaching on an emergency credential in Compton in 1997, which is why he will not argue about pathways. Whether a teacher arrives through a traditional program or through a state that now allows almost no credentialing, his position is that the coaching has to be guaranteed either way. He and Mike get into the numbers most systems overlook, including why attendance predicts turnover twelve to eighteen months out and why district-level data hides what is actually happening school by school. Tommy also names the leadership shift he has made, away from the warrior superintendent who runs through walls and toward what Atul Gawande called pit crews rather than cowboys. He is honest that the tension between urgency and patience has never resolved for him. Tune in to hear why Tommy thinks the real job for leaders of his generation now is learning to get out of the way.   Chapters: 🌎 01:49 Tommy Chang arrived at six without English and later ran Boston's schools 📉 07:06 Teaching careers now run six to eight years, not fifteen 🏫 09:37 Why turnover only makes sense when you read it school by school 📊 15:33 Teacher attendance predicts turnover twelve to eighteen months out 🏛️ 21:23 The Carnegie unit and a school model still designed for 1908 🏁 30:33 From the warrior superintendent to pit crews instead of cowboys 🔀 39:20 From Strength to Strength and the pivot from doing to coaching 🧵 41:08 Find your role in the movement and lean into your strengths Links: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drtommychang New Teacher Center: newteachercenter.org New Teacher Center on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/new-teacher-center Connect with Dr. Tommy Chang on LinkedIn or explore New Teacher Center's work to see how school systems build the capacity to coach and mentor their newest teachers.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Teacher Attendance Predicts Turnover: The Retention Signal Most School Systems Miss with Dr. Tommy Chang

  7. Aug 27

    Teacher Retention Is a School Systems Problem: Building the Black and Brown Middle Class in South LA with Jesse Melgares

    Jesse Melgares runs a TK-12 charter school network in South Los Angeles, and he argues teacher retention is not a teacher problem. It is a systems problem, and most school systems never built the systems. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Jesse, CEO of The Accelerated Schools, to talk about making good instruction repeatable instead of lucky. Jesse grew up in East Hollywood, a first generation Salvadoran-American in LAUSD schools in the nineties. He started as an English learner, reclassified in third grade, then tested into the gifted program, which he mostly remembers as the Thursdays when a few kids got pulled out to play with Legos in another classroom. He is blunt about what that sorting told the other 90 percent. A high school Spanish teacher put the community college transfer path in his head, he went from Glendale to UCLA, and he joined Teach For America in 2006. Twenty years later, two years into the CEO job, he describes the work almost like engineering. His teams build the master schedule by rostering English learners and students with disabilities first, because scheduling is usually what blocks that support. On the adult side, HR benchmarked pay across LA school systems against the top quartile, and operations replaced seven separate email addresses with a single help desk ticket carrying a 48 hour response commitment. The payoff he points to: English learners and students with disabilities posted the same gains as everyone else last year, which he says almost never happens. Tune in to hear about the broken camera that sat on a bureaucrat's desk for months, and what Jesse says it cost.    Chapters: 🎓 01:56 Meet Jesse Melgares: East Hollywood to UCLA by way of community college 🧩 04:39 Gifted programs decide who gets a chance and who does not 🍎 11:04 A complex profession that a 22 year old cannot just walk into 🌆 17:47 Building the Black and Brown middle class in South LA ⚙️ 23:14 The unglamorous systems work that breaks down silos 🗓️ 28:46 Build the master schedule around English learners first 🚧 33:09 Why the teacher gets blamed when the system was never built 💵 38:15 Benchmarking teacher pay against the top quartile in Los Angeles 📹 43:06 The broken camera that sat on a bureaucrat's desk for months 🤔 49:34 Anyone who says they have the one answer probably does not Links: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jesse-melgares-4878717 The Accelerated Schools on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/the-accelerated-schools Website: accelerated.org Connect with Jesse Melgares on LinkedIn to talk about building school systems that support teachers well enough that they stay, and follow The Accelerated Schools to see the TK-12 work happening in South Los Angeles.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Teacher Retention Is a School Systems Problem: Building the Black and Brown Middle Class in South LA with Jesse Melgares

  8. Aug 20

    Parents Are the CEOs of the Household: Why Cash and Coaching Break the Cycle of Poverty with Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio

    Economic mobility programs usually arrive with a plan for parents. Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio starts by believing them. In this episode of The Stronger Podcast, Mike Montoya sits down with Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio, Executive Director of LIFT-DC, to talk about what it takes to break the cycle of poverty. LIFT treats parents as the CEOs of the household and pairs direct cash with financial coaching. Over 90 percent of LIFT's members are women, many of them single mothers, and some arrive holding master's degrees. Neils traces that conviction to his own K-12 years in the DMV, where he moved six times between kindergarten and ninth grade. A tenth grade counselor told him he could not get into his dream school and gave no reason why. The next year, a different counselor told him he could, and then helped him do it. He also makes a blunt case about the sector's habit of studying what it already knows. Pilots are supposed to test whether something works, and cash transfers work. LIFT's DC members pushed a local child tax credit into the city budget, then told Neils they were not done, because cash without coaching is only half of it. Mike and Neils also get into the consulting practice Neils built after friends kept asking him how to start a nonprofit, and the short book he wrote so the answer would fit in an hour. Then there is the comic book habit that has outlasted every job he has held. Tune in to hear why Neils believes the people closest to the problem are the ones already holding the solution.   Chapters: 🌍 00:50 Meet Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio, son of Ghanaian immigrants and lifelong DMV resident 🎓 07:55 Six moves before ninth grade and the teachers who believed in him 💵 11:11 Parents are the CEOs of the household: LIFT's cash and coaching model 🤝 14:57 Financial coaching rooted in dignity instead of a document checklist 🏛️ 16:51 Members set the policy agenda: DC's child tax credit fight 🔁 19:35 Pilots are supposed to test what works, and cash transfers already do 📘 22:34 Turning friends' questions about starting a nonprofit into a short handbook 🌱 26:26 Do not let the idea just stay in your head 🦸 31:12 What comic books taught him about hope and not giving up 💬 38:05 Society will tell you the problem never gets solved, believe yourself anyway Links: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nryemofio LIFT: whywelift.org LIFT on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/lift-inc Connect with Neils on LinkedIn or explore LIFT's work to learn more about investing in parents through cash, coaching, and policy shaped by the families themselves.   Connect with Mike: www.linkedin.com/in/mmsc Stronger Consulting: strongerconsulting.com Publish a Book That Matters:  booksthatmatter.org Start a Podcast That Matters:  podcastsmatter.com Go from Expert to Thought Leader: geniusdiscovery.org  For more great podcasts like this one, visit https://podcaststhatmatter.org Stay strong.

    Parents Are the CEOs of the Household: Why Cash and Coaching Break the Cycle of Poverty with Neils Ribeiro-Yemofio
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

The Stronger Podcast is where the real conversations behind education and nonprofit leadership come alive. Each episode spotlights executives, founders, and purpose-driven leaders who are shaping schools, organizations, and communities across the country. These are the people on the front lines, opening school doors, building new models, and creating opportunities for kids every single day. Leaders share their journeys, the challenges they are navigating right now, and the mission that drives them. It is the kind of candid, heart-level exchange you would normally only hear after hours at a conference. Listeners can expect stories of impact, resilience, vulnerability, and vision. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes raw, always real. This podcast is not about selling products or ideologies. It is about connection. By amplifying the voices of those doing the work, the goal is to build community, spread powerful ideas, and ultimately fuel the larger mission of creating opportunity for millions of children. If you care about education, leadership, and what it takes to build change from the ground up, this is your front-porch seat to the conversation.

Information

  • Creator
    Mike Montoya
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    49
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Mike Montoya
  • Show Website
    The Stronger Podcast

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