Patrick is one of the nation’s leading experts in educator compensation. Following a career spanning elementary, middle and high school teaching, tutoring, coaching and leading in both independent and public schools, Patrick’s doctoral dissertation at Vanderbilt University, “An Integrated Approach to Professional Development, Faculty Evaluation, and Compensation: Resources for Independent School Leaders”, allowed him to visit independent school campuses across the country to explore how schools were seeking to creatively cultivate mission-aligned human capital.

Following its completion in 2006, Patrick served as the founding Director of Technical Assistance for the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educator Compensation Reform that oversaw the federally funded Teacher Incentive Fund program.  In this capacity, Patrick worked with a talented team of multidisciplinary experts to provide support to some of our nation’s largest and most complex school districts (such as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami), an array of rural districts, charter schools, and State departments of Education with the design, implementation and impact evaluation of their innovative compensation systems for educators and school leaders.  During this time, Patrick and the research team published multiple guidebooks and research reports to support innovative compensation system design.  In his role as the Director of Policy for the Center, and with the support of the Aspen Institute, Patrick worked with a team of content experts to support members of the House and Senate Committees crafting our country’s policy agenda around compensation reform.  Concurrently, with support from the Gates Foundation, Patrick led a team of education and technology experts in the development of multimedia resources to help district and school leadership teams navigate the work of compensation system innovation.  In 2022, with generous support from the E.E. Ford Foundation, and in close collaboration with the talented team at NBOA, Patrick served as the lead researcher for the MIssion-Anchored Compensation Strategies project - the most comprehensive assessment of compensation and benefits practices used in our independent school community to date. The deliverables from this research synthesize insights from over 400 schools, across 44 states and 8 countries, and leveraged survey, focus group and interview / site-visit data.  And now, Patrick and the Strategic Partners team are excited to leverage our collective expertise to support independent schools in the work of mission-anchored growth.