EXPERT EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP

ROWENA FLANDERS-RAMOS
Chief Executive Officer, Member

Rowena Flanders-Ramos, Chief Executive Officer. Rowena currently serves as the Vice President of Accreditation for the Association of Independent Schools of Florida, overseeing and developing standards of excellence for hundreds of schools in the State of Florida. Rowena has personally overseen the accreditation of over fifty private school programs and is highly regarded as an expert in the field of school management, STEM curriculum and instruction, and project-based learning methodologies  

Rowena Ramos is also the Director and Chairman of the Board at Central Florida Preparatory School, a private school serving students PreK-12th grade, which she founded in 1990 with her late husband. She holds a Master of Education, a Florida Directors Credential, an AMS Montessori Credential, and a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary and Secondary Education.

Rowena is known for her profound ability to foresee educational trends and needs, and for translating these insights into actionable plans that drive progress and innovation. The initiatives she’s implemented at Central Florida Prep over the past three decades have often served as case studies for successful operational planning and new program implementation.

Rowena's work in developing teacher-facilitated best practices is a testament to her belief in the power of skilled educators to shape the future of learning. By creating supportive frameworks that encourage teachers to explore new pedagogies and leverage technology, she has played a pivotal role in enhancing educational quality and accessibility. This focus on empowering educators has not only elevated teaching standards but has also cultivated environments where continuous improvement and excellence are the norms.

Rowena also brings a wealth of specialized training to her educational practice. With certifications in FastForword, PACE, Master the CODE, and Interactive Metronome, she developed the Bob Flanders Academy at Central Florida Prep, an intensive remediation program designed to help students develop their reading skills and processing speeds.

Rowena’s dedication and innovative approaches have not only transformed the educational landscape within her school but have also inspired a legacy of excellence that continues to influence the broader educational community in Florida. The leadership team at Central Florida Preparatory School, having been mentored by Rowena, continues to  uphold her standards of excellence, ensuring that the institution remains at the forefront of educational innovation. This continuity of vision and purpose among the school's leadership guarantees that Rowena's impact will resonate through future generations of educators and students alike.

PEYTON FLANDERS
Chief Operations Officer, Member

Peyton Flanders has over 13 years’ experience in operational management, business development and executive leadership, and a lifetime of experience in the school business. At 13, her first job was taking out the trash after school as part of the School Cleanup Crew, and over the last two decades, she’s mastered core operations from fiscal budgets and property development to administrative staffing and curriculum selection. She holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Central Florida, and an Executive MBA from Rollins College.

Prior to joining Clear Direction Education, Peyton spent five years as a sales manager and trainer for the Fortune 500 hotelier InterContinental Hotel Group. Given the opportunity to hire her own staff, she hand-selected and coached her team to record breaking performance numbers and was eventually honored with being the youngest person in the company’s history to receive the Million Dollar Producer Award for team sales production. After leaving IHG, Peyton co-founded a successful startup in the talent selection and executive recruiting spaces, and found a niche recruiting Heads of School, Principals, Development Directors, and other key administrative staff for private and charter schools.

In 2017, Peyton founded EnrollmentGenius, a full-service marketing agency that works exclusively with private schools. EnrollmentGenius specializes in school brand development and brand positioning, admissions and enrollment process, and all aspects of digital marketing; including PPC customer acquisition, funnel building, conversion optimization, full stack development, SEO strategy, content creation, and data analytics and analysis. Over the last 6 years, EnrollmentGenius has generated over $1 billion in tuition revenue for private schools in 18 states.

Peyton currently serves on the Technology committee for the National Council for Private School Accreditation and is a sought-after speaker in the world of private school accreditation, where she’s called to speak on topics related to brand positioning, digital marketing strategies, and best practices in admissions & enrollment procedures for organizations including the National Independent Private School Association (NIPSA), National Council for Private School Accreditation (NCPSA), and COGNIA, whose total influence reaches 36,000 school institutions globally and serves 25 million students.

DAN RISHAVY
Chief Financial Officer

Dan Rishavy is CEO of Link Up Inc. and its divisions, Link-Up Education Services, ExcelEd USA, ExcelEd International and Insight Analytics, which respectively provide education services in the US and abroad, and analytic services. He has been an executive in services businesses for 35 years, and in the charter school industry since 2004. Mr. Rishavy has successfully restructured charter school operations to bring failing and financially burdened charter schools to high academic achievement and financial viability. His companies provide significant expertise in charter school operations, curriculum, finances, instructional technology and assessment, and community relations. This expertise is helping schools perform better by focusing on their key strengths. For example, the Athenian Academy of Technology and the Arts, with education support services provided by Link-Up, Inc. since 2009, is the only “A” rated Title 1, K-8 school in Pasco County, Florida.

K-12 programs managed range from high performing specialized STEM schools, to schools providing for the specialized needs of students from low-income households. Education services include support in curriculum selection, pedagogy, and data analytics incorporated into organization-wide communications and Learning Management Systems.

Dan is the organizations champion of data analytics for performance assessment and improvement in learning gains and is leading the work to provide predictive and prescriptive analysis through an Artificially Intelligent Learning System under the ExcelEd Learning Systems/Insight Analytics brands. Dan also has extensive experience in real-estate school property development and financing. He holds a Master of Finance from Keller Graduate School of Management and completed the MBA program at Inter-American University. Professional development includes graduate-level courses from NSU, Dept of Education, in curriculum development and instructional technology; machine learning an digital business strategies, MIT; and computer assisted learning and language learning with applications in learning management systems, assessments and artificial intelligence.

GERMAINE LEWIS
Director of Admissions & Recruiting

Germaine Lewis is a sales director with over 10 years of experience in corporate sales process development, management and marketing. Starting his career in the timeshare industry in the early 2000’s, Germaine quickly emerged as a leader in sales production, winning Global Salesperson of the Year on three separate occasions at both Hilton Grand Vacations and Bluegreen Vacation Club. Because of his passion for the sales process, he was personally selected to write and implement the sales training scripts and coaching plans for Bluegreen Vacation Club. BVG’s overall sales performance increased and their employee attrition decreased as a direct result of the procedures Germaine put in place, all of which are still in use as the primary source of training and development today. 

After joining the education industry, Germaine was able to apply the same core concepts that made him successful in the vacation industry to make an immediate impact on student enrollment in the private education space. Within his first 90 days, Germaine reinvented the sales process at a STEM-based private school in Orlando and increased the overall student enrollment by 36.1%. Germaine then took his proprietary student enrollment and retention process and consulted with other private schools throughout the State of Florida, resulting in an average increase in enrollment of over 30%. 

Germaine joined the Clear Direction Education team in 2020 as the Director of Admissions. He is now responsible for the enrollment performance of the company’s entire portfolio of schools, and is directly responsible for hiring, coaching and training his teams to success. 

MAGGIE COLLET
Director of Marketing Communications

Maggie Collett is the Director of Marketing Communications for Clear Direction Education, where she oversees all of the external communication and outward-facing branding including marketing materials, ad strategy, and digital asset management.

Maggie knows that designing compelling, relevant brands and ad campaigns are a critical part of a school’s success. With a keen ability to identify target audiences and positioning points that make schools stand out, she designs content that resonates with prospective families and helps drive enrollment requests. Her repertoire ranges from writer, photographer, and graphic designer to leadership consultant and Student Life professional. Maggie has studied what makes people pay attention and recognizes the intricacies of human communication and interaction. She uses this data to create engaging, consistent brands that support schools’ growth initiatives.

Maggie’s web design, marketing campaigns and technical ad strategy experience have been directly responsible for increased student enrollment and community engagement at over a dozen private schools across the country. The schools she works with see an average 120% increase in interest request in the first 90 days, and she works directly with the Admissions Departments and key leadership team at each school to support their enrollment initiatives.

She enjoys seeing the world and has lived, worked, and adventured all over the globe, including a year spent working with the Management and Marketing Department at University College Cork in Cork, Ireland. Most recently, she worked for the Colorado Department of Education in the Office of Postsecondary Workforce Readiness. Maggie’s educational background includes a Master of Science in Leadership and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication with an emphasis in New Media, both from Southwestern College in Kansas.

BERNIE DURGIN
Director of Facilities & Engineering