Leader, teacher, author and entrepreneur Dr. Steve Constantino has a long and distinguished career in leadership and bringing innovation to educational and business organizations. Steve has held numerous leadership positions at all levels of organizations, including being the CEO of his own start-up and presently as the Virginia State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Steve is internationally recognized for his work in family engagement and his innovative, non-conventional, entrepreneurial and outlier approaches to leading organizations and acquiring impressive results. As a master of the stage, he has captivated thousands of teachers, administrators, school board members and business people from the United States and around the world. His amazing keynote presentations and workshops have been featured in local, state, regional, national and international conferences. With the gifts of storytelling, humor and the knack for telling it like it is, Steve is a much sought-after speaker and leadership consultant because he is the rare combination of someone who can both lead and teach others how to lead.

He has experience both in the public and private sector and leverages this unique lens to challenge conventional leadership practice favoring what he describes as a "blow up the box mentality." As an entrepreneur himself, Steve founded a small start-up and brings this unique perspective of leadership to his teaching and speaking on the topics of entrepreneurial leadership in education as well as his unique approach to the engagement of families and communities through his Five Simple Principles model.

Steve's work quickly gained national prominence and soon he began traveling the United States speaking and working with all types of educators, school board members, and businesses to promote sound practices in the leadership of organizations and the leveraging of family engagement as an essential element in increased academic achievement for all students and workforce productivity for businesses.

As a result of his experiences and his practical approach to engaging families, Steve has authored three books on the subject. His first book, Making Your School Family Friendly (NASSP, 2002) was published after being selected by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the MetLife Foundation to create the first-ever family friendly schools workshop, held in Washington DC. Steve was also selected to work directly with the American Business Collaboration on a national project to connect home and school to help employees be more engaged families.

His second book Engaging Every Family (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) soon followed. This book expanded on the conceptual framework of the four domains of family engagement. In 2008, Steve released his third book 101 Ways to Create Real Family Engagement (Engage Press, 2008).

Steve's fourth and newest book (2015) Engage Every Family: Five Simple Principles is published by Corwin Press and features his Five Simple Principles model. .

Steve began his career as a teacher and moved through the ranks to district superintendent. Today, Steve is the Chief Academic Officer, Virginia Department of Education and an adjunct lecturer at the School of Education, College of William and Mary where he teaches a doctoral level class in executive organizational leadership. Steve continues to accept as many invitations as he can to speak and consult with schools, districts and business organizations around the world.

Back to Speakers