"All Skinfolk Ain't Kinfolk" with Nye Trusty

More Than A Diversity Hire with Dr. Melissa Leonard-Goodlett

Melissa Leonard-Goodlett, EdD. [https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#] knew she was a diversity hire. She took the job anyway because she was also the most qualified person in the room. In this episode of The Exit Interview, Dr. Melissa breaks down a career that went from dyslexic kid playing teacher with her siblings, to AP English instructor watching Black students pay for a high school education they never actually received, to burning out at a wealthy PWI where parent surveys went straight to HR and her principal never once stepped foot in her classroom. She saw the literacy crisis from both sides: underfunded schools pushing kids through, and affluent schools inflating grades to protect their reputation. Same problem. Different zip code. After years of microaggressions, invisibility, and hives she couldn't explain, she resigned. Now she's an educational consultant, reclaiming her why one new teacher at a time.

Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire with Kamye Hugley

Kamye Hugley [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kamyehugley/] is back, and this time, she's talking about what happens when you trade the classroom for the nonprofit world. Fan favorite Kamye returns to The Exit Interview to share her truth about making the leap from Black educator to nonprofit professional. Spoiler: it wasn't the escape she imagined. From navigating workplace dysfunction to rediscovering her worth, Kamye breaks down how she transferred her teaching skills into a brand-new arena and what she wishes someone had told her before she made the jump. If you're a Black educator eyeing the nonprofit sector as your next move, this episode is your required listening.

Saying No To Unconditional Service with Dr. Jessica Reed-Thomas

Her closing words? Joy chaser. And she means it. Born in Anchorage, raised to become a lawyer, and fully resistant to the classroom, Jessica Reed-Thomas, Ed.D., fought off teaching for years. Then, a mentor, a university employee with good intuition and an air-conditioned education building at Temple University, changed everything. What followed was a 12+ year career spanning classroom teacher, technology integration specialist, service-learning coordinator, agriculture curriculum lead, and, eventually, assistant principal overseeing 2,700 students and nearly 500 IEPs in the School District of Philadelphia. But the real story is what it cost her. Dr. Thomas opens up about surviving on leftover event food, falling asleep in her guacamole, being physically injured on the job multiple times, and staying in toxic workplaces the same way you stay in a bad relationship until the people she was serving told her to leave. It was her students who said, " Go". It was her daughter who said, "Why do you keep going back?" And it was her own reflection on unconditional service as a false badge of honor that finally made it click. Now she's channeling 20 years of hard-won wisdom into consulting on educator wellness, running a youth entrepreneurship program out of Temple University, and building a vending machine curriculum that teaches algebra and financial literacy. Her five-part retention framework policy, practice, people, power, and accountability, is a blueprint every district should be reading.

"All Skinfolk Ain't Kinfolk" with Nye Trusty

Nye Trusty [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nyeshantrusty/] brings a candid, layered, and deeply necessary conversation about identity, belonging, and why representation without inclusion is just window dressing. She's worn many names and even more hats: teacher, coach, doctoral student, and now nonprofit founder. In this episode, she gets raw about what it really means to show up fully in spaces that weren't built for you, including what happened when Black leadership asked her to strip her classroom of its Blackness. From growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, to teaching seventh graders in Baltimore and Louisiana, Nye's journey through education is one of resilience, demoralization, and ultimately, radical reinvention. She opens up about the moment she knew it was time to leave the classroom, not because she stopped loving her students, but because the system had worn her down to the point where she had nothing left to fight with. And she's honest about something the education world doesn't like to say out loud: sharing a skin tone doesn't mean sharing a vision. Black leadership can cause harm too, and pretending otherwise puts Black educators at risk. Now, through her nonprofit, The TitheWell, and their groundbreaking Tubman Project, a global fellowship that takes Black educational leaders to Ghana, Nye is building the spaces she never had.

The Tax We Pay with Kelly Mitchell

Kelly Mitchell's journey through education is a crash course in recognizing when systems are working exactly as designed...not for us. From stumbling into teaching via Craigslist after the 2009 recession, to middle school math teacher, to high school dean managing 350 students, to state workforce development, Kelly kept asking, "Who can fix this?" only to realize the system kept saying, "Not us." Kelly's revelation: education's recruitment problem isn't about signing bonuses, it's asking Black people to return to systems that actively harmed them their entire childhood. The retention problem? Leaders who laugh off racism when test scores are good, colleagues who outsource racial incidents to the "Black representative," and the invisible tax of carrying everyone else's learning curve. Now running Inclusive Design Group and pursuing her PhD, Kelly's done the full bingo card: classroom, admin, state, nonprofit. Her conclusion? The answer was never in climbing higher within broken systems; it's in collective power, teaching local Black histories, and helping our people understand the systems of oppression to reclaim what's ours.