Zizi has spent more than four decades in the classroom, teaching, watching how students learn, and refining what actually works when reading doesn’t come easily. Over the years, that career has taken many shapes — general education, special education, literacy coaching — before narrowing, over the past decade, into a focused specialty: intensive, Tier 3 literacy intervention for struggling middle school readers. Zizi currently works as a literacy interventionist at Corvian Community School in Charlotte, NC, where zer days are spent one-on-one and in small groups with the students most schools have run out of ideas for.

That long classroom history is now paired with formal research training. Zizi holds two Master of Education degrees, in Reading and Special Education, and is a third-year doctoral student at UNC Charlotte, studying Curriculum & Instruction with a concentration in Literacy Research, Policy, and Practice. Zer dissertation interests sit at the intersection of classroom practice and the systems — MTSS structures, school policy, teacher preparation — that determine whether struggling readers actually get the support they need, when they need it.

On the clinical side, Zizi is a certified LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) Volumes I & II Facilitator and has completed IMSE’s Comprehensive and Intermediate structured literacy training, grounding zer practice firmly in the Science of Reading. Zer approach also draws on training as a Breathe For Change certified facilitator in trauma-informed mindfulness, SEL, and yoga, so that literacy support never loses sight of the whole child — nervous system and all. But the research and the credentials are in service of something simpler: the belief that struggling readers aren’t broken, and that the right structured, relationship-centered instruction can change the trajectory of a student’s entire academic life.

Zizi is active in the literacy research and education community: a general member and board newsletter editor for ELATE-GS (English Language Arts Teacher Educators – Graduate Strand, a division of NCTE), Vice President and President-Elect of UNC Charlotte’s Educational Leadership Student Organization (ELSO), and a member of the International MTSS Association (IMA). Zer research has been presented at the UNC Charlotte Graduate Research Symposium — where ze received the Promising Presenter award for early-career researchers with high-potential scholarship — as well as the German-American Research Symposium, the CATO College of Education Research Symposium, and the Cultivate Child Development Conference.

Zizi’s Place is built on that same combination: coffeeshop warmth and Science of Reading rigor, nature-inspired and neurodiversity-affirming, for readers who just need someone to help every letter find its space.

Off the clock, Zizi’s table only gets more crowded: mom to three, adoptive mom to two more, and adoptive grandma to three grandchildren who keep zer laughing and a step behind on sleep. There’s usually a puppy underfoot and a crochet project in progress — something Zizi picked up as its own small practice in patience and presence, not unlike the work ze does with zer students. It’s all the same instinct, really: show up, stay steady, and help whoever’s in front of you find their footing.