The conglomerate of brands that make up Allison’s professional livelihood are each rooted in collaboration, innovation, co-creation, and design.

Allison Zmuda is a longstanding education consultant focused on curriculum development with an emphasis on personalized learning.

Just as she advocates for personalized learning to be used by her clients, she practices it when engaging with her clients. It is important to Allison that she develop a relationship with those she pours into, preferring long standing relationships over quick, one-off sessions.

Allison appreciates creative expression, especially within education, which led her to create Learning Personalized, a treasure trove of personalized learning efforts by those she has encountered throughout her career. Upon discovery of a student, teacher, administrator, or leader engaging in innovative learning or teaching, she features them on the site as a Q&A, video interview, or written article.

After 20 years, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the course of Allison’s business with in-person education grinding to a halt. Though in-person meetings have resumed, a significant portion of Allison’s client engagement continues to take place online and she often uncovers content for Learning Personalized through platforms like LinkedIn.

Newfound partnerships.

Though the pandemic was challenging, it led to multiple partnerships for Allison: Habits Personalized, Learning Sets, and Institute for Habits of Mind. With each partnership, Allison has brought her passion for personalized learning, innovation, and creativity, weaving her talents in with the modalities of others:

• She co-founded Habits Personalized with longtime friend and colleague, Bena Kallick, a merging of personalized learning with Habits of Mind.
• She co-founded Learning Sets with longtime friend and colleague, Heidi Hayes Jacobs. Learning Sets are collections of content with targeted actions to engage, examine, & demonstrate with corresponding tools, tasks, and resources.
• She became a co-director for the Institute for Habits of Mind, founded by Art Costa and Bena Kallick, adding a new perspective to a longstanding brand.

The conglomerate of brands that make up Allison’s professional livelihood are each rooted in collaboration, innovation, co-creation, and design. To engage her is to engage a forward-thinking educational leader who will go shoulder-to-shoulder with students, teachers, and administrators to make sure learning is meaningful and relevant.

Where it began.

Allison began as a public high school teacher in Newtown, Connecticut, where her passion for her students and innovative spirit inspired the writing of her first book: The Competent Classroom (2001). She made the transition from classroom to consultant in 2002 with a handful of long-term clients (PK-12) on multi-year projects to support learning as defined by school and community goals.

She continues to create and has gone on to write and publish many more books, including How to Leverage Personalized Learning in the Classroom (2019), coauthored with Jill Thompson, The Quest for Learning (2017), coauthored with Marie Alcock and Michael Fisher, Students at the Center: Personalizing Learning with Habits of Mind (2017) coauthored with Bena Kallick.

Work with Allison or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.