The English Advance Curriculum Team is composed of experienced educators and subject-matter experts with diverse professional backgrounds across immigrant integration, workforce development, adult education, and industry-specific training. Drawing on their deep expertise, the team collaborates to design original, comprehensive ESL curricula tailored to a range of industries. Their work integrates industry-specific vocabulary, practical communication skills, and real-world scenarios, and includes fully developed, ready-to-use instructional materials, teacher manuals and lesson guides, digital modules for online learning, and student and instructor guides and tutorials. Through close partnership with employers, the team ensures all curricula are relevant, effective, and immediately applicable in the workplace.
Claudia Carco is an Argentinian-born TEFL & TESL instructor, teacher trainer, college administrator and curriculum consultant and developer with over 20 years of experience. She holds a BA in TEFL/TESL from the renowned Instituto Superior Dr. Joaquin V. Gonzalez in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Queens College, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude and where she was awarded the prestigious “Elaine Goran Newman Award” in recognition of superior scholarship.
Claudia’s career of over 20 years includes teaching EFL/ESL to adult learners both in Argentina and the U.S. She is also a teacher trainer, textbook reviewer, and curriculum developer. As an independent consultant for the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education and in partnership with the Immigration Forum, she created, developed and reviewed industry-contextualized curriculum both for in-person and online instruction and trained and supported teachers across the country for curriculum implementation.
Claudia is currently the Assistant Dean of ESL at the English Language Institute at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY, the largest ESL program in the SUNY system. She lives in Orange Country, NY with her family and enjoys being out in nature, exercising, traveling, and eating good food.
Susan Gaer is a technology enthusiast and a Subject Matter Expert for OTAN (Outreach and Technical Assistance Network), a curriculum specialist for Word Education, and an adjunct professor for the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul. She has an MA degree in English from San Francisco State University and an MA in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University. She is a former president of CATESOL (California Association of Teachers to Speakers of Other Languages). She has presented both domestically and internationally. She enjoys inspiring teachers to integrate technology into their courses.
According to her mother, Arlen Gargagliano was born an ESL teacher. Her mother loved to tell the story of how in first grade, she brought home Susumu Sakata, a non-English-speaking Japanese boy, with whom she was somehow able to communicate. That was the beginning of her multiple decades of ESL teaching, textbook writing, curriculum development, instructor training, workshop facilitating and more.
This native New Yorker’s English teaching experience has given her the opportunity to meet so many wonderful students from around the world. In addition to teaching in the US, she’s lived in and taught in Spain and Peru, given teacher trainings throughout the Americas, in Japan, as well as in Egypt and Turkey. She also spent close to three years traveling back and forth to Saudi Arabia, where she first worked with the Ministry of Education (through the Institute of International Education), and then as Learning and Development Manager for an artisan initiative in that country.
The author and co-author of several acclaimed textbooks—and cookbooks—has spent most of her teaching career ESL at Westchester Community College, where she is currently working as a teacher trainer and curriculum developer.
Gargagliano started working with the National Immigration Forum, with whom she’s had the honor collaborating on several contextualized English curricula and training teachers, in 2016. Most recently, she’s had the pleasure of trying out some of the material as a teacher and will continue doing so this summer.
The part about teaching ESL that Gargagliano loves best is—and always has been—the students, who never stop inspiring her with their initiative, energy, and enthusiasm.
Lindsay Messoline is an educator with over 20 years of serving students from marginalized, minoritized and racialized populations. She has worked with refugees and migrants in Oregon and Tijuana, Mexico, and formerly incarcerated young adults in Los Angeles. She is now working with system-impacted and currently incarcerated students in New York. Her specialties include GED and adult high school completion, foundational literacy and math, English and Spanish-language acquisition, and fostering a sense of self-esteem, self-love, and confidence through education. She is highly experienced in curriculum development and design and enjoys working with people with diverse perspectives to create material that truly serves all learners. In 2021, she founded Collaborative Voices Initiative in order to amplify historically excluded voices in education and beyond.
Victoria Neff is the Assistant Director of the EdTech Center @ World Education where she helps World Education and partners use technology to improve the reach and benefits of education and workforce development initiatives across the world. Victoria has worked with the English at Work team since 2019 on their mobile learning strategy, curriculum development and other edtech integration areas.
Victoria has spent over a decade working at the intersection of technology, education, and social impact. She is passionate about advancing digital equity and working with local partners to design innovative digital solutions that can enhance learning and life outcomes. Prior to her work at World Education, Victoria lived and worked for several years in Asia. She has a BA in Global Studies from Providence College and an MA in International Development with a concentration in project management from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. She holds certifications in Human-Centered Design and Teaching English as Foreign Language.
Ana Negoescu is the Assistant Vice President for Workforce Advance at the National Immigration Forum, where she leads initiatives that expand economic mobility for immigrant workers. She partners with employers nationwide to build inclusive talent pipelines and advance immigrant inclusion as a core workforce strategy. As head of English Advance, the Forum’s industry-contextualized English-language learning initiative, she oversees programs that equip frontline workers with the literacy, communication, and digital skills needed for advancement.
Ana leads the English Advance curriculum development team in designing industry-tailored ESL curricula that integrate job-specific language, communication skills, and real-world scenarios. She works closely with employers to ensure training is relevant and immediately applicable on the job.
Before joining the Forum in 2015, Ana directed citizenship and civic engagement programs at CARECEN and held leadership roles in coalitions advancing immigrant rights and workforce inclusion. She has taught adult ESOL and civics, developed curricula, and authored publications on workplace language access and immigrant services. She holds a master’s in public policy from American University and a TESOL certification from Montgomery College.
Briggitte Suastegui (she/her/ella) is the Senior Program Manager for Workforce Advance at the National Immigration Forum. She has been working on all aspects of the English at Work initiative since 2021, where she oversees program cohorts, manages partner relationships, provides participant support, and collaborates on the curriculum development process and teacher training. Before joining the Forum, she worked as the Citizenship Coordinator at CARECEN DC, where she oversaw the implementation of the organization’s citizenship education services, which included classes, individual tutoring, and naturalization interview preparation and Spanish language interpretation.
Suastegui attended American University in Washington, DC where she received her BA in International Studies and Spanish Studies and MA in International Affairs.