Our Team

Alyssa Gallagher is an education author, leader and speaker. She has extensive experience leading schools and districts to revolutionize learning for students. Under Alyssa’s guidance Los Altos School District became a nationally recognized leader in education innovation with her work featured in Forbes, Wired, The Economist magazine and on CNN and CBS’ 60 Minutes. After two decades working within k12 education, Alyssa led the global leadership practice for The Wiseman Group, co-designing executive development strategies to enable leaders to become better ‘multipliers’ of their people’s talent. Alyssa has worked with a wide spectrum of leaders, ranging from early career professionals in her local school district to seasoned executives in Fortune 500 Companies. Alyssa enjoys working with leaders to design strategies that leverage the capability, creativity and intelligence of everyone on their team.

Max Cooke is K-12 systems change advocate who empowers education professionals to excel in their school and school district leadership roles. As the Head of BTS Spark in Canada, Max is working to ensure that more Canadian school and district leaders are aware of the benefits and impact that world-class professional leadership coaching can provide to them and their teams. Prior to his role at BTS Spark, Max served as the President and CEO of the EdCan Network, where he led strategic initiatives aimed at enhancing the capacity of education professionals to cultivate healthier workplace environments.

James has several years of experience working within global talent development & coaching organizations in various roles ranging from marketing through to account management & customer success.

Having managed global programs that involve multiple cohorts across various geographies, James has an acute understanding of what it takes to ensure successful onboarding, adoption, and delivery of multilayered & complex coaching engagements.

In this capacity, he works with key stakeholders to better understand their talent and L&D objectives and provide guidance on what initiatives will be key to their success.

Tara O’Brien is a founding partner and facilitator for BTS Spark. She joined BTS Spark in 2019 when it expanded its presence into North America after spending 17 years in education as a teacher and principal. Having worked in a variety of schools across the United States, she understands both the complexity of individual organizations as well as the universal demands of educators. She’s also a mom of two teenage kids, so she’s passionate about supporting the adults who are impacting and influencing our children. Tara has presented at numerous conferences and webinars as well as co-written articles on wellbeing and educational leadership. While Tara lives in the US, she has deep ties to Canada as her extended family has lived there for generations. 

Sarah brings 14 years of marketing experience across the training, arts, e-commerce, and hospitality sectors, specialising in digital marketing, brand strategy, and content marketing. Born in Germany and raised in Indonesia, Sarah later trained as a dancer in Singapore before settling in Australia. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communications from the University of Sydney. With a background as a performing arts teacher, she brings a lifelong passion for learning and development. Drawing on her global experience and creative roots, Sarah brings a thoughtful, purpose-driven lens to her work in raising awareness amongst education leaders of BTS Spark’s not-for-profit professional learning services.

Linz started her career in the newspaper industry moving on through roles in magazine design, advertising and varied design work before joining BTS. At BTS, Linz creates self-paced digital learning content on many platforms including Canvas, Momenta, Changr, BTS Coach and Sounding Board. She has been involved in the design of several hundred leadership programs for education clients and school systems, ensuring that online learning, coaching and workshop sessions are integrated into a seamless blended learning experience for participants. Adaptable, highly organised and capable of working under pressure to tight deadlines, Linz has a practical approach to problem solving. She enjoys the challenge of maximizing the user experience and seeing projects from concept right through to completion.

She is an award-winning leader with over 30 successful years in broadcast media sales. During her corporate career, she worked her way up from sales assistant to general sales manager positions including Direct of Market Development. She has held board positions with non-profit organizations, including Vice President of the Alliance for Women in Media-Chicago, the Black Women’s Expo Advisor Panel and Mentoring programs with the Morgan Park Boys and Girls Club and SBCOC’s Women of Influence/Sister 2 Sister Ministry. 

As a leader and coach, Alan has extensive expertise in leadership coaching both experienced and first- time people leaders and working cross culturally. Alan coaches leaders across all industries and has coached education leaders with BTS Spark since 2019. Prior to his coaching career, Alan held numerous positions in the trading industry ranging from trading assistant to full-time trader. In addition to his role as a trader, Alan also served as a risk manager for up to thirty traders. As a risk manager, it was Alan’s responsibility to coach these traders daily, helping them sustain the high level of performance that the trading industry requires. 

Judy works with leaders and their teams in Executive Coaching, Organization Development, Team Development, Change Management, and Group Facilitation.  Her clients range from education leaders to Fortune 500 High Tech and Biotech companies. Prior to founding her consultancy in 2003, Judy worked in Organization Effectiveness and Management Development at Cisco, Octel/Lucent, Accenture, and American Airlines.  Much of her work focused on enterprise-wide change management initiatives (e.g., culture change, M&A), performance management and leadership development.

Cindy Rogan resides in Bellevue Washington where she develops and facilitates cutting- edge workshops and effective coaching for teams, leaders, and individuals. Cindy has been a leader in education, team training and coaching for over 30 years. During her extensive career in public service, Cindy has brought her unique combination of insight, humor, and reflection to a variety of teams and leaders including executives and senior leaders, public and private school leaders, school leadership teams, central office leaders, police officers and labor union leaders. In her private practice with clients, Cindy focuses her efforts on the client’s identified needs as they pursue their personal goals and desired outcomes.

In her previous roles as Executive Director of Schools in the Bellevue School District, and as a school principal, Cindy worked closely with leaders, boards, teachers, parents, and teams to meet the shared goals and initiatives of the organization. Utilizing a deep understanding of change management, resource utilization and performance benchmarks, Cindy brings her understanding of strategic management to her work with clients. With her expertise as a leader in multiple settings, Cindy understands the unique challenges leaders face, daily. From unique and dynamic human resource issues to challenging contexts related to contract negotiations, she is positioned to bring her empathy, compassion and understanding to best meet the leader’s needs.

Daisy is an experienced Leadership coach. She helps leaders to create a high performing team culture by supporting leaders to bring their best self to work and lead their teams with greater effectiveness. She is also an Intercultural coach helping organizations to advance their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. Daisy started her career in the Retail Banking Services, where she learned the importance of customer-centricity that drives a positive customer experience. Since becoming a coach, Daisy has coached across all industries and especially enjoys coaching education leaders with BTS Spark.