Shana Dinner de Vaca is a Director of School Partnerships for NAATE.

Shana Dinner de Vaca is a Denver native. Before joining the NAATE team, she served as the principal of STRIVE Prep - Westwood, a Denver public charter middle school. During her tenure, the school moved from green (Meets Expectations) to blue (Distinguished), the highest rating on Denver Public School€™s School Performance Framework. Prior to that rewarding endeavor, she was STRIVE Prep's (then West Denver Prep) founding sixth grade writing teacher and later served as the Chief Curriculum Officer for the growing school network.

At the beginning of her career, Mrs. Dinner de Vaca taught at Denver Summerbridge for three summers and then spent two years in Quito, Ecuador, where she helped start an elementary school. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder and holds a B.A. in both Spanish and French (language and literature) and an M.A. in Education from the University of Denver. She enjoys running and, as a result of her love of languages, has now begun studying Italian.