Meet the Staff

Sharon Adams-Taylor - Associate Executive Director
Sharon Adams-Taylor joined AASA in 1990 as director of the association's Options for Pre-Teens program, a school-based primary prevention and youth development program in three urban school districts. Before coming to AASA, Adams-Taylor was a senior program associate with the Children's Defense Fund, where she coordinated CDF's adolescent pregnancy prevention clearinghouse. She also provided state and local technical assistance around adolescent issues and developed and managed a national coalition of youth and education organizations focused on positive outcomes for young people. Adams-Taylor's extensive background in training and research includes leadership positions with the University of North Carolina's Child Health Outcomes Project and the Resource Access Project, where she coordinated training and technical assistance for 178 Head Start grantees in six states, and fellowships at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Adams-Taylor holds a bachelor of science degree from Howard University, a master of public health degree in maternal and child health from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a master of arts degree from the Catholic University of America.

Yasmin Bowers - Project Manager
Yasmin Bowers joined AASA in July 2009 to focus on projects that promote awareness and improvement of indoor environmental health in schools. She serves as the Project Manager for the Healthy Schools Environment, and uses her background in Environmental Health and Science to provide a holistic approach to health. Bowers comes from New Orleans, where she served as co-founder and director of Consciously Rebuilding for two and a half years. She was a Research Fellow for Mount Sinai School of Medicine International Exchange Program where she researched health equity of farmworker women in Cape Town, South Africa. The combination of non-profit work and public health research afforded her experience in community health, education, health rights, and outreach. She received her master’s of science in public health from Tulane University.

Bryan Joffe - Project Director
Bryan Joffe serves as AASA's project director for the Ready by 21® national partnership. Ready by 21 works with education, community, and business leaders to improve outcomes for children and youth and ensure that all children are ready for college, work, and life. Prior to joining AASA, he worked for the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education focusing on PK-16 alignment and high school to college transition. Joffe received his master's in public affairs from Brown University and bachelor’s degree in political science from Tulane University. He joined AASA in October 2009.

Angela Johnson Davis - Strategy, Innovation, and Research Director
Angela Johnson Davis joined AASA in August 2009. She is involved in projects that focus on preparing children for life beyond high school. She serves as the strategy, innovation, and research director and is primarily responsible for directing the research activities of the Ready by 21Ò subcontract agreement which is focused on the efforts of developing, implementing and sustaining strategies for building impactful school-community relationships essential to school districts. Prior to coming to AASA, she worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a management analyst. While there, she was responsible for managing environmental-related issues and inquiries from the public, members of Congress, and various organizations and affiliates. Angela also worked as a public health analyst for the Health Resources and Services Administration where her primary responsibility was monitoring and analyzing HIV/AIDS-related policy development and epidemiological data in order to provide technical assistance, training and consultation of the development and implementation of a variety of HRSA-related prevention, care and treatment programs. Some of her additional experiences include: research and policy-related work in public health and health care domains on both federal and state levels, and working in school and community settings. Johnson Davis holds a Bachelor of Science degree in criminology from Florida State University, a Masters of Arts degree in health studies from the University of Alabama, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in health education and health promotion from the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. 

Nausheen A. Saeed – Project Manager
Nausheen Saeed joined AASA in August, 2010 to focus on capacity-building for schools to prevent chronic disease, more specifically reducing the burden of Asthma. Prior to joining AASA, Nausheen worked with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). Nausheen focused on two main projects at NACCHO. The first project was an Environmental Public Health Tracking project funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to promote and increase the knowledge base of local health and environmental professionals of the nationwide initiative on the tracking of environmental public health data. Nausheen also led NACCHO’s food safety projects, including managing the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response. Nausheen has a Bachelor of Science in biological sciences from the Loyola University in New Orleans and Master’s in Public Health with a focus in toxicology and risk assessment from Tulane University’s School of Public Health.

Mlatibe Seidou - Administrative Assistant
Mlatibe Seidou joined AASA in October 2006 from the Center for Child and Human Development at Georgetown University. She enjoys contributing to issues that have an impact on children and education.