Polk County Education Commissioner Connects Employers and Job Seekers

Since the beginning of her career, Naomi Boyer wanted to help people in difficulty through education.

After several career stops, the Polk County education executive is now doing just that, helping scores of people advance in their careers and lives by earning what has become a coveted commodity in higher education: microcredentials.

Boyer began as a special education teacher, working with children who had severe emotional and learning difficulties. She earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in special education from the University of Florida. “I have a passion for learning and education, especially for those who face greater hurdles and barriers in the learning process,” says Boyer.

However, when she started a family, she focused more on her two daughters and stepped down from her role as class representative, instead going back to school herself.

“Women can do anything… the limitation is that I can't do everything at once,” says Boyer, now 57. “You have to decide individually what is important. The most important thing for me at the time was raising my children and making sure they had a good foundation before I returned to the world of work. I could combine my time at home with them with further training.”

She received her doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of South Florida in 2001 with a focus on interdisciplinary education and organizational change. Her dissertation topic was “Constructing Online Learning: Systemic Insights into Group Learning in an International Online Environment.”

That marked the beginning of what Boyer calls a “winding journey” into higher education leadership. And it also paved the way for Boyer to drive change in her industry.

She first did this for a decade, from 2002 to 2011, at the USF Lakeland/Polytechnic Campus, where she was associate vice president. She helped develop online programs, faculty development, youth-focused programs, robotics education, and international initiatives.

She then spent a decade, from 2011 to 2022, at Polk State College, where she worked in various administrative roles, eventually serving as vice president of strategic initiatives and innovation and chief information officer. There, she took on more change-oriented leadership roles, working on the school's aerospace and elementary education programs, among others. She says her career has never “followed a set path and it was just a matter of raising my hand when someone said, 'Hey, can anybody do this?'”

Boyer says she initially believed that change was happening within universities. But as time went on, she felt like she was moving a boulder and couldn't carry it to a certain point. During her time at Polk State University, she says an organization called the Education Design Lab supported some of the working groups she was involved with.

“When the opportunity to join the lab arose – this was over five years ago – I thought, 'Oh my God, I can enable scalable change at a higher, broader level, and without bureaucratic constraints.' That was a tremendous opportunity for me,” says Boyer.

When she joined the lab, her job was to help create a catalog of “digital micro-evidence,” 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 highlight a person's skills. People can then include the microcredentials on their resume, LinkedIn profile or Facebook page, Boyer says.

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

“My current work is about the global conversation about developing new skills,” says Boyer. “How can we attract talent to the jobs that employers are looking for, while opening the door to those who need opportunities but may be hampered by a lack of skills?”

Boyer says she has a team of data coaches and a data collaborative that helps employers and colleges develop tools to help them use microcredentials, for example to incorporate them into employee recruitment or student admissions processes. She also has software that matches microcredentials and related skills with job openings for job seekers. A waitress, for example, may have active listening skills that could be relevant to a customer service job.

“It’s really about helping people get better jobs based on their knowledge and skills,” says Boyer.

A major focus is on learners of the “new majority”, as she calls them, for whom the path to university is not necessarily easy.

Although she has global connections and partners, Boyer also thinks locally first. “My biggest hope is that the work we do as a nation and international community is brought back here. I want to bring it to Polk County, I want to bring it to Florida, and I want to make sure we have robust opportunities to make skills visible. It's really about changing people's lives and their economic vitality at the same time,” Boyer says.

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