Find out how the future of education can be incorporated into your strategic vision…
Invest in your vision with a collaboration…
Hello, I’m Andrea Thomas and I’m so pleased that you are here.
I am a professional collaboration partner looking to be a part of your community to share, ideate and innovate with you. Universities and nonprofits hire me when they want to build and scale strategic global education initiatives.
There are substantial shifts in our world taking place every day and I feel the profound responsibility to contribute to the greater good. I can do this best by connecting, collaborating and building with you on your initiatives as a Consultant. I work with Senior Leaders in Higher Education to build and scale virtual exchange programming and strategy for Internationalization at Home (IaH). I also design collaboration spaces which support faculty in their quest to provide international learning opportunities for their students.
I have had the good fortune to work with so many wonderful individuals from around the world. The most special part of any of these experiences is having the chance to be a part of a community and experience belonging as my most authentic self. In my research and lived experience, I’ve found so many individuals seeking to feel connected and to experience what the world has to offer. In a shifting landscape and rapidly evolving digital economy, the conditions for this are greater and the need for intentionality and active participation has grown more urgent.
How do we create a better world?
I work with you to create the conditions for effective international peer to peer learning opportunities through virtual exchange. Well-designed collaboration spaces provide healthy dialogue and community interaction. I like to consider myself a Digital Community Architect, building spaces that cultivate the power of humanity.
Let me be your advocate and share methods on how to build out your internationalization strategy at your university.
Specialties: Virtual Exchange, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), peer to peer network communities, collective leadership, large complex change and transformation, organization design, organizational assessment.
Bio
Dr. Andrea Thomas is an educational leader for global learning, innovation and virtual exchange delivering transformative results to build and scale collaborative international programming in higher education through faculty professional development and learning design. She has worked with 45 universities globally as an institutional mentor to design effective programming for digital community and international peer to peer learning through Virtual Exchange and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).
Andrea was the Senior International Officer (SIO) at the State University of New York (SUNY) Farmingdale State College and a Fellow for the Association of International Educators Administrators (AIEA) in 2019. She has worked with the American Council on Education (ACE) and The SUNY COIL Center on initiatives in Virtual Exchange. Andrea began her career at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) where she focused on Ethics and operations within international development. In 2022, she became a United Nations Global Diplomacy Fellow. Andrea earned a Doctorate at the University of Southern California (USC), Rossier School of Education where she studied Global Education Leadership and Administration with rotations in Hong Kong, Finland and Qatar. Andrea is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from the Kyrgyz Republic and speaks Russian, Kyrgyz, and Spanish languages. She has lived and worked in Central Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South America.
Reflection and Testimony
We brought Dr. Thomas to our School of International Education at a pivotal time during the pandemic to assess our pilot Virtual International Exchange (VIE) program. Dr. Thomas demonstrated a keen ability to discern our complicated organizational structure, connect quickly with our faculty and international colleagues, and provide much needed guidance and structure to our fledgling program. With her deep knowledge of Collaborative Online International Exchange (COIL) foundations and practices, as well as her understanding of internal structures, she provided us with a comprehensive assessment and plan to be able to map out our programs' success and account for scale. Throughout our time working together I was greatly impressed by Dr. Thomas' expertise and yet very approachable and down-to-earth demeanor. We truly benefitted from having Dr. Thomas' support during the early days of our VIE program.
-Ally Snell, Director of International Programs and Experiences, SNHU.
