“I can’t predict what I will be doing six months from now, let alone six years from now, but I hope whatever I’m doing, it’s with a spirit of gratitude and joy, and no regrets.”

Naa Evans, ‘24 Post-Masters Certificate
Rockville, Maryland

Naa Evans pursues career paths and businesses that bring her joy. She wove her knowledge of educational systems and what she learned from the San Jose State University (SJSU) School of Information Post-Masters Graduate Program to create Kingo Crown, a practice where she provides personal librarianship to teens and their families to support learning beyond academics.  

Education Policy Researcher

Naa Evans graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in economics in 2010, right after the financial crisis. Looking for a job, she decided to join Teach For America, a teacher training program that puts candidates (who do not need prior teaching experience) in different schools around America. She was placed in the Boston Public Schools, and from 2010 to 2012 taught seventh and eighth grade English Language Arts.

“The parts that were fun were when I learned from my students; about their lives, their cultural experiences. I liked understanding what they were excited about, what they liked to read, thought was funny, all of those things. The relationship building with students was the best part of teaching.”

Although Naa enjoyed working with her students, she wanted to understand educational systems from a bird’s eye view. Therefore, from 2012-2013 she completed an Education Policy and Management master’s degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

“I wanted to formally study how education systems work at the district and state levels. I wanted to learn what it would take to make sustained positive change.”

Naa was an education policy researcher at SRI International for several years and helped various education systems around the country. In 2018, she joined Education Forward D.C., a nonprofit that fundraises money to grant to people who have “revolutionary ideas to make schools in D.C. better.” One of her favorite projects was with a series of organizations that were trying to build emotional well-being into the everyday fabric of a school.

“They wanted to acknowledge that you can’t learn well and you can’t teach well if you aren’t well yourself. School-based mental health is a fundamental thing to me. You can make all the changes you want, but if a student, their families, or teachers aren’t okay as humans, it won’t have an impact.”

Librarianship and SJSU

In 2019, through a colleague at SRI International, Naa was invited to the American Library Association conference, which had a profound impact on her. 

“I met authors in the hallway, and listened to committee deliberations, and spent time on the exhibitor floor, and tears started pouring down my face because I was so happy. I normally don’t start crying in public, so I realized I had to pay attention to these emotions.”

She started researching librarianship and found the SJSU Post-Master’s Certificate, which was the best fit for her goals, finances and needs.

“By the time I applied I was fairly certain I did not want a ‘traditional’ teen librarian role, nor did I want to complete a full MLS program. The SJSU PMC allowed me to still access rigorous graduate-level coursework with the flexibility of doing so at a pace and timeline that worked well for me.”

Naa graduated in December 2024 having followed the Youth Services Pathway. Her favorite classes centered on graphic novels for teens, AI in the library, and digital copyright, which were all useful for her entrepreneurial endeavors.

“I found myself way better positioned than a lot of the other entrepreneurs I know. I told myself I’m not here for a degree. I’m here because I want to learn things that I love and that are useful to my everyday life and goals right now.”

Kingo Crown Practice

Naa has started many different business endeavors. She makes activity books related to Korean dramas, runs a Korean drama bingo, designs gifts, helps runs wine festivals through her brand Wine Things Co., and does interior design work. 

“The only thing that all of these have in common is that it’s a focus on joy and exploration. I feel I can’t predict what I will be doing six months from now, let alone six years from now, but I hope whatever I’m doing, it’s with a spirit of gratitude and joy, and no regrets.”

A significant project of Naa’s is her business Kingo Crown, a practice where Naa works with preteens and teens who are seeking support, typically around reading. While Naa did not miss working in schools and knew she did not want to work in a traditional library setting, she did miss having bonds with young adults, so she thought, “I’ll make a job for myself that only has the fun part.”

“The appeal of interacting with teens from a non-traditional librarian viewpoint is the opportunity to get to know each teen on a personal and contextual level, and build a mutually fun relationship. I realized I wanted to have the opportunity to be the type of adult I didn’t have in my life growing up. I had adults who cared about me, but what I did not have were adults who had no expectations, adults who just wanted me to have fun. I want to be the adult who’s just helping young adults achieve what they want to achieve without imposing my own expectations.”

Naa works with her clients to understand their interests and mutually build a readers advisory list, which extends beyond word books to graphic novels, comics, or movies and music. Each list is tailored to the teen’s interests and needs, and evolves as the client responds to the recommendations.

Advice for Students 

“When it comes to a program like the SJSU PMC, even more so than even a regular master’s program, you should go in with a clear vision of what success looks like for yourself. And that vision doesn’t have to align with how anyone else would define success, or how you’ve defined success even for yourself previously. I was able to enjoy the program precisely because I didn’t approach it like any other academic or professional experience I’ve had before, and with less pressure on myself, I was able to be more creative and exploratory in how I engaged with coursework, professors, and classmates. I have no regrets about taking the full 3 years available to me.”