Our Managers
Angie Luck
After changing her major three times in three years, Angie finally emerged from Trinity University in San Antonio with a degree in English literature. What does one do with a degree in English? Well, the first thing you do is take a job at a newly founded non-profit organization and write grants for 15 years to enable it to grow from a budget of $250,000 to $55 million. While doing that, you design and build programs for troubled youth, with an emphasis on innovation and advocacy for minority populations. You write position papers, you publish articles…you get the point.
After about 15 years of that, you’re prepared to launch your own business and learn a completely new skill set – research and evaluation. So Angie and her partner Rachel Howell hooked up with Stanford Research International, and learned a new trade, which has become the foundation of their business. Now they partner closely with a number of charter management organizations and traditional school districts to conduct impact evaluations for federal and state grants. Angie is the Managing Partner, and handles the proposals, contracts, budgets and other administrative details in addition to her work with clients.
Throughout the three decades described in the two paragraphs above, Angie put her English degree to work – writing grants, reports, position papers, research articles, marketing presentations, etc. As a writer, a social justice advocate and an entrepreneur, she has collected a broad expanse of experiences that fuel not only her skill sets but her desire to change the world. No small task, but if you have a similar mission, call her up.
CONTACT ANGIE:
aluck@copiaconsulting.com
(512) 750-5068
Rachel Howell
Rachel managed to combine a tennis scholarship and a seat on the varsity team with her degree plan, graduating from Stephen F. Austin with both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Education. While many people would have moved into teaching, Rachel has always gone against the grain. With little interest in teaching or coaching the “typical” students, Rachel became a juvenile probation officer. Her foundational need to keep it interesting and challenging served her well, and she played several different roles that merged education, juvenile justice and child welfare, including serving as the Director of Education and V.P. for Southwest Key Programs, Inc., Director of Education for The Brown Foundation, the Community Resource Coordinator for the CRCG in Travis County and as a Consultant at the Region XIII Education Service Center.
After ten years of working with Angie Luck at Southwest Key, the two decided to launch Copia Consulting as a means of broadening their scope and exercising their entrepreneurial spirits. Rachel is very much the extrovert in Copia, and as such leads much of the facilitation work, client communications and project management. Her combination of skills and a sense of humor have ensured long-term relationships with numerous clients. And if you need connections – Rachel knows people in influential positions across the U.S., the result partially of her service on a national non-profit board for several years and also her chatty nature on planes and trains.
CONTACT RACHEL:
rhowell@copiaconsulting.com
(512) 422-8439
Christina Steiner
After graduating from Wellesley College with a double major in Economics and Spanish, Christina joined Teach for America in the Rio Grande Valley as a 4th grade bilingual teacher. Her experience on the ground, half a mile from the Texas-Mexico border, piqued her interest in improving opportunity for underrepresented groups. After TFA, Christina earned her MBA from UT Austin with a concentration in Strategic Marketing. She discovered that the methods used to evaluate products and services were useful in many contexts. During her MBA she worked for HEB Grocery Store Company and Whole Foods Market conducting quantitative analyses. In particular, at HEB Christina was given a strategic human assets management project, where she merged complex datasets that enabled company leadership to make data-driven decisions.
After her MBA, Christina decided to hop the pond (the other pond) and teach at a women's college in China for a year while applying for her PhD. Christina's doctoral studies at the Pardee RAND Graduate School utilized a 20-year dataset and over 40 variables to model promotion, turnover, and employee satisfaction in the civilian workforces of the Department of Defense. She feels honored to have worked on numerous projects for the United States military while at the RAND Corporation: women in combat, veteran's employment, and accountability in the DoD Laboratory Enterprise, to name a few.
Christina met Copia six years ago, mid-PhD, while she was working for a charter school network as Grants Director. (Like Angie, Christina has experience in large-scale project and grants management, having overseen over $120 million in grant funding annually.) Since then, Christina has collaborated with Angie and Rachel on mixed-methods research studies for a wide array of clients. Christina enjoys working on complex social issues where statistical modeling is coupled with on-the-ground observations and feedback to move clients and individuals towards solutions that are both economical and effective for their stakeholders.