Jill Ackers

VS America recently welcomed Jill Ackers to the company as its Education Director, responsible for educational planning and professional development. Her expertise includes learning environment design, school leadership, curriculum and instruction, and educator growth and development. She has over 25 years of experience as a school designer, educator, and leader in K-12 and higher ed and is a certified learning environment planner with A4LE.

Ackers’ role as Education Director at VS America will focus on educational planning, professional development, and research on learning environment patterns needed for agile space design. As an educational planner, her role will support the interconnectedness of pedagogy and space – and how space plays a deep role in curriculum delivery.

She has partnered extensively with architectural firms, interior designers, and furniture vendors worldwide to design responsive, flexible, and agile spaces during the master planning phase, schematic design, and design development. She has successfully engaged school boards, leaders, and educators in short-term and long-term visioning, strategic planning, and professional development to align and utilize innovative spaces with instructional delivery methods. She has developed extensive lessons-learned libraries through experiential research and collected data through post-occupancy studies to share how building design and classroom layout impact student achievement and well-being.

Her work will range from educational planning for K-12 and higher education to developing classroom layouts for procurement, designing and implementing professional development for schools, and playing an active role with architecture and design firms, as well as dealer partners. This ensures alignment between educational visioning, physical environments, and the educational programming needed to bring agile spaces to life through teaching and learning.