Dr. Cheyenne E. Batista is the Founder & CEO of Firefly Worldwide Inc., a professional learning community and social impact consulting practice that supports education and social impact leaders to improve and grow their organizations through transformative learning experiences, change management support, team cultivation, conflict transformation, and equity-centered leadership practices since 2018. A lifelong educator with 25+ years of impact in various education, nonprofit, and corporate spaces, she has taught and led in classroom settings in the U.S. and abroad, most recently as Lecturer in Management at the Broad Center through Yale School of Management and as Adjunct Professorial Lecturer at American University School of Education.

In a unique player-coach role, she previously served as Founding Principal and Founding Superintendent, Managing Director of a PK to 12th grade network of community-run charter schools in East Harlem, NY where she co-designed, led, and strategically scaled the network while managing school principals, central staff, and serving on the senior management team at the founding organization. In that time, she supported a $50M capital campaign to erect a $30M education facility in the neighborhood.

Dr. Batista is a TED-Ed Masterclass keynote speaker whose multi-award winning dissertation examined experiences of senior-level Black women leaders navigating interpersonal conflict within the interracial teams they manage. It was awarded the 2023 Outstanding Dissertation Award from AERA Division A and the 2022 Dissertation of the Year Award from the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate. An alumna of New York City public schools and a first-generation college student, she earned a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an Ed.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from American University School of Education. Sharing time between Philadelphia, NYC, and Cape Town, South Africa, she is a trilingual world traveler who loves chasing sunsets worldwide with her life partner and humorous boxer.