Polk County education exec links employers, job seekers

Since the beginning of her career, Naomi Boyer has wanted to help people who struggle, and do it through education. 

After multiple career stops, the Polk County education executive is now doing that by helping swaths of people advance in their careers, and life, through earning what's become a hot commodity in higher education: microcredentials.

Boyer started out as a special education teacher, working with children who had severe emotional issues and learning disabilities. Her undergraduate and master’s degrees are in special education, from the University of Florida. “I've been passionate about learning and education, particularly those who face more hurdles and barriers in the learning process,” Boyer says.

But when she started a family, she shifted to focus on her two daughters, so she took a step back from being the leader in a classroom. She instead went back to school herself.

“Women can do it all…the constraints are I can’t do it all at once,” says Boyer, now 57. “You have to determine what's important individually. My most important thing at that point in my life was raising my children and making sure that they had a good foundation before I went back into the world of work. I was able to couple my home time with them with continuing education.” 

She got her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from the University of South Florida in 2001, focusing on interdisciplinary education and organizational change. Her dissertation was “Building Online Learning: System Insights into Group Learning in an International Online Environment.”

That paved the way for what she calls a "winding journey" in higher education leadership. It also paved the way for Boyer to foster change within her industry. 

She did that first for a decade, from 2002 to 2011, at the USF Lakeland/Polytechnic campus, where she was an assistant vice president. She helped develop online programs, faculty-staff development, youth-based programs, robotics education and international initiatives. 

Next, she spent a decade, from 2011 to 2022, at Polk State College, where she worked in a variety of administrative roles, ultimately serving as the vice president of strategic initiatives and innovation and chief information officer. She took on more change-based leadership tasks there, working on the school's aerospace and elementary education programs, among others. She says her career was never "on a chartered path and all of it (was) just raising my hand when someone said, ‘Hey, can anyone do this?’”

Boyer says she initially thought change happened from within universities. But as time went on she felt like she was pushing a boulder and could only take it so far. While at Polk State, she says an organization called Education Design Lab facilitated some of the work groups with which she was involved.

“When the opportunity opened up to join the lab, and that was over five years ago, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I can facilitate scalable change at a higher, broader level, without some of the bureaucratic constraints,’ and so it was a tremendous opportunity for me,” Boyer says.

When she first joined the lab, her role was to help roll out a catalog of “digital microcredentials,” she says. 

A microcredential can be a soft skill like critical thinking or oral communication. Education Design Lab released microcredentials in 2020 that it can award itself or give to colleges, universities and employers to award to showcase a person’s skills. People can then put the microcredentials on their resumes, LinkedIn profiles or Facebook pages, Boyer says. 

Since joining the lab, Boyer’s role has expanded, and she is now the senior vice president of digital transformation for the Washington, D.C.-based organization. Her current focus? Skills.

“In my work now, the conversation that’s going on is a global one with regard to the advent of skills,” Boyer says. “How can we get talent into the job roles that employers need but also open up the door for those who need opportunity but may have been constrained by the lack of credentials?”

Boyer says she has a team of data coaches and a data collaborative working on helping employers and colleges develop tools that will help them use microcredentials, such as incorporating them into employee recruiting or the student admissions processes. She also has software that will match microcredentials and skills associated with them to job listings for job seekers. For example, a waitress may have a skill of active listening that could correlate to a customer service job.

"It's really about elevating people into the job opportunities based upon what they know and can do," Boyer says.

A great deal of focus is on what she calls the "new majority" learners, for whom the pathway to college is not the most accessible. 

While she has global connections and partners, Boyer also thinks local-first. "My biggest hope is that the work that we’re doing as the nation and the international community, I want to bring it back here. I want to bring it to Polk County, I want to bring it to Florida, and I want to make sure that we have robust opportunities in skill visibility, and it’s really about transforming individuals’ lives and economic vitality at the same time," Boyer says.

“I never thought I would be doing the work I’m doing today because I started in a very classroom, hands-on approach,” Boyer says. “I am a very square peg that doesn’t fit well in round holes. My passion is really about education transformation and facilitating change, again for those who need it the most.”