She Came from Industry. She Built Something Extraordinary.

Career readiness is rarely a straight line. It takes twists, turns, and more than a few tries before most people find where they truly belong. Nobody proves that better than Marcette Kilgore, State Director of Career and Technical Education at the Texas Education Agency, and leader of one of the largest CTE programs in the nation.

Her path to that office wasn't planned. It was explored,  one honest step at a time.

The Job Swap That Started It All

Before education, Marcette built a career in the insurance industry. She was good at it. But she was curious about something else: the shop classroom at a nearby school. As it turned out, her friend who taught that shop class was equally curious about insurance.

So they did something remarkable for their time: they got approval to shadow each other.

This was work-based learning before anyone called it that. Career exploration before it was a program. Marcette was living the philosophy of CTE before she ever had a name for it and that instinct, that belief that the only real way to know if a career fits is to go do it, became the foundation of everything she built afterward.

Every Rung of the Ladder

Once in education, Marcette didn't rush. She climbed deliberately, mastering each role before stepping into the next. From CTE instructor to assistant principal, from HR director to district CTE coordinator, she learned the system from every angle before she was asked to lead it statewide.

Those who worked alongside her at Clear Brook High School describe a leader who treated every teacher as a professional from day one, always present, always listening, the kind of mentor whose advice still echoes years later.

Leading at Scale

When Marcette stepped into the State Director role in 2021, she inherited enormous responsibility. Texas administers over $123 million in federal Perkins V funding, second only to California, and her priorities were immediate and clear: align curriculum standards to what industry actually demands, strengthen the rigor of industry-based credentials, and close the gap between state policy and what's happening in local classrooms.

She believes strongly in ensuring that learners have access to and the opportunity to align their interests, passion, and talents with career pathways that provide an opportunity to earn a family-sustaining wage.

That language family-sustaining wage  isn't policy-speak. It's personal. It comes from someone who has worked, who has switched careers, who has sat across from employers and understood exactly what they need. Texas has formalized the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative, a partnership between TEA, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Texas Workforce Commission built on the same cross-sector thinking that has defined her career from the beginning. The 2024–2028 Texas Perkins State Plan was shaped by a statewide listening tour across twelve regions, because she knows that the best plans are built by hearing from the people doing the work.

“College, career and military readiness through CTE is the bridge between a student’s potential and their purpose, and I call on CTE leaders everywhere to keep pushing, innovating, and expanding opportunities so every learner can step confidently into a future they are ready to lead.” ~ Marcette Kilgore

What Her Story Tells Us

Marcette Kilgore is proof that career readiness isn't a destination you arrive at all at once. It's something you discover  through curiosity, through exploration, through the willingness to try something new even when the path isn't mapped out. Real career and technical education was never meant to be linear. It doesn't follow a tidy sequence of steps from interest to outcome. It takes twists and turns, dead ends and detours, unexpected friendships and handshake agreements between two people with a hunch. Marcette's journey is the living proof of that and it's precisely why she's so effective at leading a system designed to help young people navigate that same beautiful, unpredictable process.

She went from insurance to a shop classroom on a hunch and a handshake. She climbed every rung of education leadership without skipping one. And she carried the lessons of each chapter into the next.

That is what real career readiness and development looks like. Not a formula. Not a checklist. And, not the traditional linear model that ends at the diploma. The framework is a continuous cycle of development and a life lived with intention and an openness to where the work might lead.

Her name is Marcette Kilgore. And she didn't just find her way to the largest CTE program in the nation. She earned every step of the path that took her there blazing a trail of frameworks for work-based learning.

Marcette Kilgore serves as State Director of Career and Technical Education at the Texas Education Agency. She is a member of Advance CTE's National State Directors network and was welcomed into the organization's New State Director Institute (NSDI) cohort in fall 2021. She holds an M.Ed. and is based in the Houston area.

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