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Kate Scott began her career in health care administration, with a bachelor's degree in business administration and her MBA. But an unexpected loss caused her to reexamine her career choice and pursue her desire to give back to the community.
In 2012, Scott’s 17-year-old cousin, Cassidy, a senior at Scott’s former high school, was killed in a car accident on her way to school. As the community responded to Cassidy’s sudden loss in the wake of the accident, Scott felt compelled to come home to her alma mater and invest in the lives of the students there as an educator.
“I saw that the quality of student preparedness for life after high school had deteriorated since I graduated,” she says. “For educational opportunities to improve in my community, I knew that I must get into the trenches and teach. I had so many outstanding teachers during my time in high school, and I wanted to pay forward the dividends of the investment that my teachers had made in me so that future generations of students could reap their reward."
Scott served as an instructor of business management and administration at her former high school for six years, during which time she obtained a master’s in education from William Carey University. In 2018, she became associate director of the George Mason University Center for Economic Education, a role in which Scott planned and implemented professional development programming for K-12 educators in the areas of economics, personal finance and entrepreneurship.
The center is an affiliate of the Virginia Council on Economic Education (VCEE), and this year, Scott came on as VCEE’s vice president of programs. “When the position became open, I was eager to impact not just the students and teachers of Northern Virginia but work together so that all students across the commonwealth have high-quality, well-trained and empowered teachers of economics,” she says.
This academic year, VCEE is piloting a new professional development program, the Virginia Personal Finance Teacher Fellowship, that will develop a cohort of teachers from around Virginia to become change-makers and thought leaders in their schools. “Teaching is a form of human capital development,” Scott says. “When you have unique knowledge, skills and abilities, and you’re able to impart that on students, you are going to change communities.”
The program is part of VCEE’s vision of ensuring that every Virginia resident is economically and financially literate. “It’s time to start redefining and reimagining what this looks like in a post-pandemic world and how we can better educate our community for the future,” Scott says.
