Senior Director of Candidate Services
Buffy DeBreaux-Watts is a former teacher. As Senior Director of Candidate Services, she oversees all candidate advising, mentoring and records management.
Buffy's accomplishments at ABCTE include recruiting and training more than 30 teacher advisors, developing an advising and mentoring program for alternatively-certified teachers and developing the policies and procedures that govern the organization’s work with certification candidates. She is a recognized speaker and presenter, providing information about classroom management, teacher mentoring and alternative certification to audiences throughout the country.
Previously, she served as the director of marketing & outreach for ABCTE, developing the infrastructure for the organization’s candidate recruitment and external relations programs.
Prior to her work with ABCTE, Buffy served as a director of constituent relations at Partners in Education, where she oversaw membership recruitment and retention and managed a membership network of 10,000 individuals and 35 state affiliates. In this role, she successfully developed corporate-education partnerships with major U.S. companies including Exxon-Mobil, Southwestern Bell, Booz Allen Hamilton and Allstate.
Buffy has also served as an Assistant Director at Huntington Learning Center. She was also appointed Director of the Office on Youth for the City of Staunton, Virginia, where she established and managed more than 20 direct youth service programs and oversaw federal, state and local grant initiatives. In this role, she managed a staff of 15 and served as a youth policy advisor to top officials.
Her first role was as a high school English teacher. Buffy attended Mary Baldwin College and the University of Virginia.
She currently resides with her husband and two children in Maryland.