Leadership

Nikki Beinstein, Founder + President of the Board, began her career working in the fields of technology, healthcare, retail banking and nonprofit development. It wasn’t until she had two children, however, that she fell in love with education. Her first teaching position was as an Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Business at Colorado Mountain College. In 2020, she attained a Colorado teacher’s license in English Language Arts for Grades 7-12 while also founding The Serious Type, a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is “to uplift youth through the power of authentic self-expression.” Nikki won a Colorado Book Award in 2009 for Phlogs: Journey to the Heart of the Human Predicament with and about her co-author and mentor, the late George Stranahan; she also edited George's revolutionary book A Predicament of Innocents: Might Schools Help? through their former nonprofit People's Press. 

Nikki is the sole author of the young adult chapter book and musical The Middle World (2016), a blend of historical fiction and magical realism about the Redstone Castle, as well as the upcoming children’s picture book Breathe, Bison illustrated by Elizabeth Argüello. A graduate of the Horace Mann School (New York City), Cornell University (BA, Psychology) and Yale University (MBA, Finance and Strategy) where she was chosen by her classmates as their student class commencement speaker, Nikki is currently a Math and English Language Arts middle school teacher and the finance manager at a tiny, rural charter school in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Nikki lives with her teenage daughter and son, dog and cat in Carbondale, Colorado.