Meet the Leadership Team

Jill Vialet

Co-Founder & Advisor
Jill has worked for more than 30 years in the nonprofit sector. In addition to leading Substantial, Jill is also the founder of Playworks, a national nonprofit with offices in 23 cities that brings play and physical activities to children across the country. Prior to Playworks, Vialet founded the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, California and served as its director for nine years.

A frequent public speaker Jill has given talks at TEDMED, TEDxSanFrancisco, TEDxABQ, and keynotes at numerous national conferences. Jill is the co-author of Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience published by Jossey-Bass in 2021. As an author, Jill has also contributed to publications such as Huffington Post, Edutopia, and Principal Magazine. 

Jill is a Eureka, Ashoka and Pahara Fellow, and in 2011 she was named one of the 30 most influential social entrepreneurs by Forbes Magazine. Substantial was developed during Jill’s year in residence (2015-2016) at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner School of Design (d.school).

Amanda von Moos

Co-Founder & Executive Director
Amanda manages Substantial on a day-to-day basis, working with our amazing team and partners to make things that improve the substitute teaching experience, and is the co-author of Substantial Classrooms: Redesigning the Substitute Teaching Experience published by Jossey-Bass in 2021. Amanda is passionate about human-centered design, making things that meet real needs and have an elegant simplicity. She brings this passion to make systems work better for schools, rooted in deep appreciation for the work of principals, teachers, and school office staff.  For the past 15 years she has worked in various capacities to redesign the systems that support schools. She began as an internal staff member leading process redesign projects in Oakland Unified School District (where among other projects, she helped improve the substitute teacher coverage rate), spent many years consulting with urban districts and partner organizations and, most recently, founded The Central Office Project, a consultancy focused on building the capacity of central office teams to make their processes work better. 

Jessie Weiser

Chief Operating Officer
Jessie has dedicated her career to fostering engagement in schools, workplaces, and communities. For over 15 years, she has designed programs that elevate people’s agency and joy, while giving them tools to thrive in their environments. She has worked directly with students, building an activities program at a high school and managing social-justice themed youth conferences. She has also worked in non-profit organizations that collaborate with schools, leading staff engagement and development initiatives. Jessie is excited to work with partners to redesign substitute teaching systems in order to improve staff and student experience at schools. Jessie holds a Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Erin Ruegg

Director of Teaching and Learning

In over 20 years in education, Erin has worked as an instructional specialist, curriculum consultant, program director, teacher, and district leader in diverse ethnic, social, and economic settings across the United States, Colombia, and Guatemala. As a district leader in the Issac and Phoenix elementary school districts, Erin designed curriculum and developed innovative and culturally responsive programming for ELL students. She has consulted for schools across North America to improve literacy instruction as well as integrate performing arts, project based instruction, and social emotional learning. In each setting, she invests in her professional community by building relationships and inspiring excellence. She understands the tenets of good instruction and knows how to create and manage instruction and curriculum for high level teaching and learning.

Erin is a National Board Certified teacher and holds a masters degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a masters degree in Education Administration from Grand Canyon University.