Tanya Carter is a nationally recognized educational leader, executive coach, and school improvement strategist with more than 35 years of experience leading transformational change across rural, suburban, and urban school systems. As Co-Founder and Managing Partner of The Impact Team, Tanya partners with superintendents, district leaders, principals, and Instructional Leadership Teams to strengthen leadership capacity, build coherent instructional systems, and accelerate student achievement through side-by-side analytic partnership.

Throughout her distinguished career, Tanya has served as a teacher, special education leader, assistant principal, principal, principal supervisor, instructional superintendent, consultant, and leadership development facilitator. Her extensive experience across multiple levels of educational leadership provides her with a unique understanding of how to align leadership, systems, and instructional practice to achieve sustainable improvement and measurable outcomes for students.

Prior to founding The Impact Team, Tanya served as an Instructional Superintendent for Denver Public Schools, where she supervised and supported a portfolio of turnaround elementary and secondary schools. In this role, she coached principals, developed leadership teams, strengthened instructional systems, facilitated school improvement planning, and monitored implementation of district priorities. Under her leadership, every turnaround school in her portfolio successfully exited turnaround status, demonstrating significant gains in organizational effectiveness and student achievement. 

Tanya’s leadership experience also includes serving as principal in multiple school districts, where she successfully led school improvement efforts, launched and opened a new elementary school, and developed high-performing instructional cultures. Her work has consistently focused on establishing strong leadership systems, building educator capacity, implementing data-driven decision-making processes, and ensuring equitable opportunities for all students.

Following her retirement from Denver Public Schools, Tanya served as a Program Director for New Leaders, providing executive coaching, leadership development, and professional learning for principal supervisors, principals, and Instructional Leadership Teams across Texas, Florida, North Carolina, California, Washington, and other regions of the country. Through this work, she helped leaders strengthen observation and feedback systems, instructional leadership practices, team effectiveness, strategic planning, and school improvement implementation.

A respected authority on school transformation and leadership development, Tanya has facilitated leadership development programs, instructional core learning walks, strategic planning processes, and professional learning experiences for educators and leaders nationwide. Her expertise includes school turnaround, instructional leadership, leadership development, organizational effectiveness, data-driven improvement, MTSS implementation, professional learning communities, strategic planning, and systems design.

Known for her ability to translate vision into action, Tanya works alongside leaders to build the structures, habits, and accountability systems necessary to sustain improvement over time. Her approach combines strategic thinking with practical implementation support, helping schools and districts move beyond planning to measurable results.

Tanya’s leadership philosophy is grounded in the belief that every student deserves access to exceptional instruction and every leader deserves the coaching, support, and systems necessary to achieve success. Her work focuses on strengthening adult practice, developing leadership capacity, and creating sustainable conditions that result in lasting improvements in student outcomes.

She holds master’s degrees in Education and Educational Leadership, principal licensure through the University of Denver, and has completed advanced leadership development through Harvard Graduate School of Education, Relay Graduate School of Education, New Leaders, CASEL, the Aspen Institute, and numerous nationally recognized leadership and school improvement programs.