Brian has served the educational profession for 25 years as a teacher, school principal, district-level administrator, university professor and entrepreneur. In 1998, Brian established The Madison Institute (d.b.a. TMI Education), a New Jersey-based educational think tank, consultant, and professional development firm serving K-12, higher education and government agencies, both at home and abroad. In 2015, Brian and TMI joined forces with Ian Jukes and his organization, Infosavvy21, to further extend his reach and influence. Brian currently serves as Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Springboard21 Education Solutions.

Since its inception, TMI, under Brian’s leadership, has been integrally involved in many important federal- and state-based educational collaborative initiatives with the New Jersey Department of Education, many national state-based Superintendents, Principals and Supervisors Associations, numerous school districts and consortia throughout the state and the northeast, institutions of higher learning, and international ministries of education.

Among his many important professional achievements, from 2003-2010, Brian served as one of the project architects and lead technical consultant to the NJ Performance Assessment Alliance (NJPAA). The charge of the NJPAA initiative was to develop and implement valid and reliable performance-based assessments that would ultimately complement traditional standardized tests. In collaboration with the NJPAA leadership team, including former NJPAA Executive Director, JoAnn D. Bartoletti (Bartoletti currently serves as the Executive Director of the influential National Association of Secondary School Principals); NJPAA Project Directors Christine Kane and Willa Spicer (Spicer went on to serve as NJ Department of Education Deputy Commissioner); and a selection of talented lead educational consultants, project participants successfully developed NJ standards-based performance assessment tasks in core subjects across grades 3-8 and 11. In the end, nearly 250,000 students from over 450 public school districts and charter schools in the state participated in multiple performance assessments, including NJDOE-required end-of-course biology prompts in 2009 and 2010.  Under Brian’s direction, TMI supported every administrative aspect of the ground-breaking NJPAA pilot project, including: the development, production, distribution, collection, and management of all performance assessment and administrative manuals, resources, and student work products; product evaluation and scoring; data entry and warehousing; and development and distribution of student, school, district, county, and statewide performance reports. In 2010, Brian was recruited by then NJDOE Deputy Commissioner, Willa Spicer, to serve as Interim Director of the Office of Student Assessment. Brian joined Ramapo College of NJ in 2008, as lead program developer and, ultimately, director of the Master of Arts in Educational Leadership program, and professor of Educational Leadership.

Brian has extensive expertise, professional experience, and a passion for authentic-based teaching, learning, and assessment. Born out of this passion are TMI’s Project ABLE and Springboard21’s Strategic Visioning and Planning Solution. The collective mission of these two important initiatives is foster in every child the skills essential for their life and work in modern times.