About Us

Chris Briggs-Hale is the CEO of Waterfall Learning, LLC, an experienced School Implementation Support Specialist, and a Certified Professional Coach.  He served public schools for 30 years, 15 of which were as a principal.  Chris served as a Senior Consultant for McRel and Marzano and Associates, a site visitor for the National Schools of Character Award (Character.org), and was a Board Member with Eunice Kennedy Shriver for the Community of Caring in Washington, DC. Chris has consulted for schools extensively across the United States. He is the recipient of the 2013 Red Cross Community Hero Award, the 2004 Sally K. Lenhardt Professional Leadership Award from Lesley University, the 2004 Community of Caring National Administrator of the Year, and the 2013 Community Service Hero, American Red Cross, Colorado Springs. 

Chris graduated from Bates College and received his M.Ed. from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, and a Principal’s Licence from the University of Denver. Chris served as a Staff Assistant at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University before entering the public school system. 

My journey to executive coaching evolved through the doorways of leadership, teaching, and consulting.  Through this work, I have come to see the power of the human-centered approach to developing one client at a time.  During my years as a Senior Consultant at  McRel International, I traveled extensively to serve and presented on leadership and mathematics topics for both teachers and district leadership. I focused on connecting school leaders to the shifts in mathematical thinking that they would need to better inspire, support, and evaluate teachers. This project merged the work of Tim Waters and Brian McNulty with the research from the National Research Council, NCTM, and many other institutions.  The result was a multi-day “Mathematics Leadership Institute” that I co-developed and delivered in the field. Elements of this work were also incorporated into Briggs-Hale, C., Cooper, M., Parsley D., Holzman, J., Martindill, H. (2005). Afterschool training toolkit: Building quality enrichment activities. National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning, Austin, Texas: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.  Website available at: 

http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/toolkits/

http://www.sedl.org/afterschool/toolkits/credits.html

I built on this experience through my work with Bloom's Taxonomy, cognitive demand, and the Marzano Taxonomy to contribute professional development materials for the field while working with Bob Marzano and Marzano Associates. In my own work with Waterfall Learning in the early 2000s, I presented and facilitated leadership and curriculum professional development to clients in the field.  As a consultant for Community of Caring in Washington, DC I presented and consulted on their framework for developing positive schools cultures in multiple states.  This experience positioned me to serve as a site visitor for the National Schools of Character Award program at Character.org. In this process I facilitated community, staff, and leadership forums focused on Character.org’s Eleven Principles. I have also served as a panel moderator and presenter for Green Box Arts ArtDesk.

Throughout this time, I  engaged groups, large and small, as a school principal and member of the Manitou Springs School District Leadership team, in group coaching, dialogues, discussions, action planning, school board and community presentations and forums, as well as professional development. Transitioning in and out of in person learning during the pandemic offered me the opportunity to facilitate high-stakes community and staff conversations about policy, procedures, and deep learning.  

Catherine Briggs-Hale is Co-Owner of Waterfall Learning LLC.  She is an award-winning, veteran classroom teacher, Instructional Coach, and most recently, an Assistant Principal  in Colorado Springs.

Catherine has deep experience teaching, coaching and leading professional development in reading and math. Her areas of coaching expertise include the science of reading instruction with an emphasis on phonics and phonemic awareness, foundations in math with a specialty in number sense and numeracy, developing executive function in the classroom, character education, classroom management, reading comprehension differentiated instruction, CCIRA Innovative Curriculum Design to Maximize Engaged Learning. 

She is a Colorado Council International Reading Association, Celebrate Literacy Award recipient and a Fantastic 49 Hero Award - Leading the transition to e-learning recipient.  

Catherine loves serving teachers, students, and school leaders!