Alma team members share how their past careers in education evolved into roles that positively impact students globally with Alma.
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Rebecca Coleman started in information systems, moved into teaching, became a district technology leader, and eventually built a career around the work that keeps districts running and funded: compliance, reporting, and making data usable.
At Alma, many of our team members started their careers in education, from teaching to school leadership. Rebecca Coleman’s path is a little different and very familiar to anyone who has ever been pulled between classrooms, data, and the reality of state and federal requirements. She started in information systems, moved into teaching, became a district technology leader, and eventually built a career around the work that keeps districts running and funded: compliance, reporting, and making data usable.
A foundation built at the intersection of teaching and tech
Rebecca graduated from California Baptist University in 2001 with a degree in information systems management, focused on database management. She quickly realized the traditional path was not for her, and shifted into education, earning an elementary credential in California. That move did not pull her away from technology. It pulled her closer to it in a way that mattered. She became immersed in using technology to make her work easier, which led to district leadership roles managing data and assessment platforms and even supporting a SIS implementation while teaching a 4/5 combo class.
From there, she made her first leap into EdTech and never looked back. She started as a customer success manager on a SIS team, helped build communities around state and federal reporting, contributed to product development and testing, and learned the realities of software as a service. Then she continued expanding her range, moving to a different SIS, then into enrollment and social emotional learning. Eventually she saw the Alma role that fit her perfectly. In her words, it was “made for a unicorn like me.”
How she first came across Alma
Rebecca’s early connection to Alma began when Alma was just entering the SIS space in California. When the SIS she worked with was “end of life’d,” she recommended Alma to smaller organizations because she had met the sales team and liked the message they delivered. Over the years, Alma kept coming up. The real moment came when she saw a post looking for leadership in compliance reporting and decided to apply.
The turning point: scaling impact beyond one district
Rebecca’s motivation is simple and very clear. In her district role, she could help a couple hundred teachers use tools that made their lives better. In Educational Technology, she gets to partner with educators across the country to utilize data. That broader reach is what pulled her forward.
Making the leap and falling in love with the work
Leaving her district was not easy socially, but it was clear personally. She remembers telling her district she was leaving, and how the union president offered multiple times to help structure her exit so she would have a way back. Rebecca already knew she was not coming back. She “fell IN LOVE” with helping districts use data to create meaningful change for students, exposing trends, and making compliance reporting matter to people.
Alma’s impact through Rebecca’s lens
Rebecca sees Alma leaning into the future of how teams work by embracing AI, with a focus on working smarter, not harder, while building solutions for the SIS market. She believes Alma’s tools make data more accessible and that Alma is at the forefront of where new technology meets student privacy and security. She’s already looking ahead to what is next, to what “next level state reporting” can become.
Lessons learned
Rebecca’s most valuable takeaway is grounded and practical: “Compliance is important, at the end of the day, it’s how districts get paid.” Once she internalized that, it helped her manage client stress and balance competing pressures in a way that still honors Alma’s mission.
Her role at Alma
Rebecca describes her work as shepherding the compliance team through state and federal mandates while staying focused on how Alma can best serve clients. She gets to “nerd out about rules and regulations” while working with people she loves working alongside.
Vision for the future
Rebecca sees Alma’s future as bright, especially as AI becomes more embedded in education workflows, as long as student privacy and data security stay tightly held. She views her role as both cheerleader and guide, helping teams embrace what is new while respecting how educational compliance has to function in the real world.
Advice to educators and administrators
Rebecca has a perfect metaphor for SIS change management: “Implementing a new SIS is like moving your home and a classroom at the same time.” It takes cleanup, transformation, and sometimes late nights. But she believes better data visualization drives initiatives that are best for students, and that the tools Alma has now, and the tools coming next, make the move worth it.
