Kyle McDonald serves as the Senior Director of Academic Program Policy for the New York City Department of Education's Division of Multilingual Learners. As Senior Director, Kyle ensures there is a cohesive, system strategy to provide the city's approximately 140,000 English language learners have access to high quality instruction in their home language, via policy development, professional learning for administrators and support staff, and advocacy. Kyle began working with displaced populations while designing a mentorship program for Somali-Americans in his hometown of Denver, Colorado. He later taught English as a second language in Nashville, Tennessee, working with students from 17 different countries, including many refugees. In order to empower communities and make school systems more responsive, he joined the New York City Universal Pre-K initiative to design and improve systems to empower and build the capacity of support staff in early childhood education classrooms. Kyle holds a Masters of Education from Lipscomb University, and Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Denver.