Founder & Principal Consultant, Sankore
I have spent my career inside institutions navigating the tension between intention and implementation working with leaders who genuinely wanted to create change but lacked the tools, language, systems, or courage to fully realize it. I built Sankore because good intentions are not enough to transform organizations. Change requires methodology.
Dr. Lanise Block is a Cultural Intelligence Strategist, Social Innovation consultant, and Courageous Leadership Educator with more than two decades of experience helping organizations navigate culture, leadership, innovation, and systems change.
Through Sankore, she helps organizations lead change through courageous leadership, adaptive culture, and human-centered social innovation.
Her work focuses on a central challenge facing organizations today:
How do leaders build systems capable of serving increasingly complex, diverse, and rapidly changing communities without losing the humanity at the center of the work?
That question has shaped her career across K–12 education, leadership development, educator preparation, innovation strategy, and digital transformation.
Dr. Block is the creator of The Simple ABCs Pathway™ a proprietary framework for cultural intelligence and courageous leadership development used in school districts, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and educator preparation programs.
Her approach combines cultural intelligence, strategic planning, systems thinking, and innovation methodology to help leaders move from aspirational values to practical organizational transformation.
She believes the most effective social innovation is not performative innovation or trend-driven change, but the difficult work of redesigning systems so people can participate, contribute, and thrive more fully within them.
Dr. Block holds a Doctorate in Critical Pedagogy, an M.A. in Teaching from from the University of St. Thomas , and a B.A. in History from Drake University complemented by
Graduate Certificates in:
Learning Technologies
e-Learning
Online Teaching
Dr. Block is a Qualified Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Administrator, certified to administer and interpret the Intercultural Development Inventory, one of the most widely used assessment tools for measuring intercultural competence and cultural intelligence development.
Dr. Block's Social Innovation methodology is grounded in formal training across multiple disciplines combining cultural intelligence with proven innovation frameworks used by leading institutions worldwide. She has been formally trained through nine distinct certifications and micro-credentials across five institutions:
Digital Business Strategy — University of Virginia
Innovating with the Business Model Canvas — University of Virginia
Strategic Planning and Execution — University of Virginia
Innovation for Impact (i4i): The Carlson-Polizzotto Method of Value Creation — Northeastern University
Design Sprint Certification — AJ&Smart
Certified Workshopper Master Class — AJ&Smart
Systemic Innovation Training Specialist — Systematic Innovation with Darrell Mann, former Rolls-Royce R&D Director and globally recognized TRIZ authority
These credentials directly inform the Sprint and Systems Tools used in the Build phase of The Simple ABCs Pathway™ ensuring that the innovation work is grounded in proven methodology, not improvisation.
Over the course of a 21-year career within Minneapolis Public Schools, Dr. Block served in classroom, district, and executive-level leadership roles, including technology integration and strategic project administration within the Superintendent’s Office.
This experience gave her direct insight into the realities of organizational change at every level of a system from classroom implementation to executive leadership decision-making.
She has also served as an adjunct graduate instructor at the University of St. Thomas, Hamline University, Augsburg University, and Metropolitan State University, where her work focused on leadership, pedagogy, innovation, and culturally responsive practice.
Dr. Block’s work extends beyond facilitation and training into the design of large-scale leadership and organizational initiatives.
In partnership with former PELSB Executive Director Alex Luizzi and collaborators across Minnesota education systems, she helped develop Minnesota’s first registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and Education Minnesota.
As the primary curriculum architect, she created CLEAR™ the Apprentice Learning Cycle a culturally responsive, Standards of Effective Practice-aligned framework grounded in African intellectual tradition and designed to support educator development across a three-year apprenticeship sequence.
CLEAR™ is currently licensed and in active implementation.
Dr. Block has also served as:
lead developer of Minnesota cultural competency continuing education training for educators,
an approved professional development provider,
and an external evaluator reviewing teacher preparation programs for alignment to the Standards of Effective Practice.
These experiences continue to shape Sankore’s approach to courageous leadership, systems transformation, and organizational learning.
Dr. Block is co-author of Cultivating Courage: Innovative Strategies for Developing A Critical Equity Leadership Identity (with Dr. Naomi Taylor) a practitioner-focused text used in leadership development programs and graduate courses.
Recent engagements include leadership institutes, statewide education conferences, executive workshops, and organizational consulting engagements focused on:
courageous leadership,
human-centered AI implementation,
adaptive organizational culture,
and equitable systems transformation.
Her technology integration research has been published and presented at national professional conferences. Her research interests include the digital divide, advocacy, and inclusion with a consistent focus on how technology can serve equitable outcomes rather than deepen existing disparities.
Multi-Session Equity Leadership Engagement (ongoing) Osseo Public Schools, Equity Department In partnership with Dr. Naomi Taylor
"Cultivating Courage: Innovative Strategies for Developing a Critical Equity Leadership Identity" She Leads Luminary Conference — September 2025 Co-presented with Dr. Naomi Taylor
"Human Centered AI" Performance Excellence Network Workshop — November 2025
"AI Implementation for K-12: A Practical Framework That Puts Humans First" Technical Leadership Conference — Winter 2026
"Leading with Heart: Building Culturally Responsive Early Childhood Programs Through Critical Equity Leadership" Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children — January 2026
"Cultivating Courageous Economic Development Leadership: An Equity Framework for Inclusive Community Investment" Economic Development Association of Minnesota Winter Conference — 2026
"Unleashing Courageous Leadership: Dismantling Barriers Through Critical Equity Decision Making" MSSA Conference — March 2026
Primary Curriculum Architect Minnesota's First Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program, co-founded with Alex Luizzi, former Executive Director of PELSB. Developed in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and Education MN — 2023
Education 2.0 Outstanding Leadership Award — 2022, in recognition of contributions to the field of education and learning
Top 100 Innovators and Entrepreneurs Magazine — 2022
Fearless Commerce — Featured Leader
I didn’t build Sankore to be the biggest consulting firm in the room. I built it to be the most useful one.
The leaders I work with are carrying real weight the weight of organizations trying to serve communities in a time of rapid change, cultural complexity, and institutional strain.
My role is to help leaders see more clearly, think more courageously, and build systems that align more closely with the people they are meant to serve.
That is the work.
And it is worth doing