About the CTE Collective
Founder, Turbare Collaborative | Superintendent | Systems Builder
About the CTE Collective
The CTE Collective is a national group of nine career and technical education leaders working together to help schools, employers, and communities build the relationships behind real pathways.
Formed by Alli Dahl, Peter Hostrawser, Dr. T.J. Vari, Dr. Mark Covelle, Jason Van Nus, Dr. Sandra Adams, Sylvester Chisom, Kristy Volesky, and Dr. Christopher Nesmith, the Collective brings together practitioners, authors, speakers, consultants, superintendents, CTE directors, work-based learning leaders, podcast hosts, and pathway architects who have learned from some of the strongest career-connected learning models across the country.
What unites the Collective is a shared belief: CTE is not a side program. It is a community strategy.
Across their work, members of the CTE Collective have helped build and lead work-based learning systems, youth apprenticeship models, career academies, internship programs, employer partnerships, CTE curriculum platforms, districtwide readiness systems, and national conversations about the future of career-connected learning. Their experience spans rural, urban, regional, and national contexts, giving the Collective a broad view of what works, what breaks down, and what communities need in order to move from isolated programs to durable pathways.
The CTE Collective does not begin with a canned program model. It begins with the relationships, trust, governance, and shared accountability required to make any high-quality pathway possible. Schools bring pedagogy, credit, student support, and academic alignment. Employers bring real work, technical standards, labor-market reality, and expectations for quality. Communities bring purpose, legitimacy, and long-term commitment.
Together, the CTE Collective helps communities turn workforce need into student opportunity.
Its work is grounded in a simple idea:
No school, employer, or community can build the future of CTE alone. But together, they can build pathways that last.
