This soon-to-be management consultant has successfully navigated classroom teaching, curriculum design, and even a long-distance engagement! Now, she’s ready to start a new journey as a summer product manager.
Drew Gannon Singh has a way with words.
Growing up in a suburb outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the current MBA candidate channeled her love of reading and writing into working on her high school newspaper, leading a teacher to suggest she consider a career in journalism. After graduation, she followed the advice and relocated to Illinois for the journalism program at her top-choice college, Northwestern.
"I went into Northwestern with kind of a chip on my shoulder,” says Drew, who quickly realized her upbringing in a traditional school district was relatively rare among her new classmates. As she learned about the various independent schools her peers had attended, she developed a strong sense of pride in her public-school background. At the same time, however, she began to realize her public K12 experience was far different than those of millions of students in underserved communities.
Drew recalls Teach For America recruiting her in 2010, soon after the documentary film Waiting for Superman was released in the United States.
“For me, that was such an awakening,” Drew says of the film, which describes the rampant inequity within public education and prominently features school administrators from Milwaukee. As a dual major in economics with experience in business writing, Drew saw TFA’s two-year commitment as a way to impact a community in need of passionate educators before transitioning to journalism full-time. In fact, she remained at her charter organization in New York City for seven years total: four as a teacher and three as a curriculum manager.
“Social studies was the subject I was passionate about,” Drew remembers. “It brought in my love of reading, but also my deep desire to teach kids about the world.” As a member of the Achievement First network team, she spearheaded efforts to craft more culturally-relevant curricula for her largely Black and Latinx student population, while also supporting schools experiencing both administrative and classroom challenges.
Soon, as a director with a high-level view of organizational inefficiency and inequity, Drew decided graduate school represented an opportunity to increase her impact through formal management training. She applied to business schools alongside her fiancé, and both received highly competitive offers-- albeit to totally different programs. The couple understood their acceptances were too good to decline, so after saying “I do,” Drew and her new husband moved to begin their studies at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Business School, respectively.
As a Northwestern “double dipper,” Drew underwent another recruitment cycle, this time for management consulting rather than education. After accepting an offer from Deloitte, the company encouraged her to explore other internship opportunities after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted their traditional summer associateship. Now, Drew is excited to navigate her role as a summer Product Manager at Edstruments.
“I never really thought that I would work in the edtech world,” says Drew, but felt the company was a perfect fit for her interests as she learned about its mission and vision. As a product manager, she will research user experience, K-12 funding, and pain points within education management in order to position Edstruments as an ideal school finance solution.
“You have to be really intentional about the language used and how you connect the dots,” Drew says of coordinating the stakeholders involved in her new position. Having spent much of her career around educators, Drew discussed the learning curve involved collaborating with new types of professionals, including CFOs and engineers. Her past experience and successes, however, show she is clearly up for the challenge. Welcome to the team, Drew!
Edstruments exists to equip education leaders with the knowledge and tools to most effectively and equitably serve their students. To learn more about how we can help your school administrators make better financial decisions, email us at hello@edstruments.com or fill out the contact form on our main website.