Robbye
Kirkpatrick M.Ed.
Founder
Robbye Kirkpatrick has been a public-school student, a Title I English teacher, a foster-adoptive parent navigating special ed, and a commercial real-estate executive. Texas TransformED is what happens when all four of those roles show up in the same person. As a highly mobile child growing up, she experienced firsthand what it’s like to fall through the gaps in the system and the power one highly skilled educator’s extremely high standards have to remove barriers to achievement.
As a Title I 7th- and 8th-grade English teacher in one of the worst-performing middle schools in America, she took the methods of the best teachers in the country and ran them in her own classroom. Her students read over one million words a year of high school–level literature, performed Shakespeare on real stages, debated elite private schools, and traveled extensively. They even jumped two to four grade levels in reading. She raised $75,000 in private funding to make it happen in year one while completing her master’s at Loyola Marymount.
She arrived in that classroom the long way. Early in her career at The Trammell Crow Company, her team was hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District. They delivered an award-winning transaction that saved the district over $85M. She glimpsed a sprawling urban system with a multi-billion-dollar budget delivering failing academic outcomes and soon left commercial real estate to teach for four years.
In 2010, Robbye adopted three siblings out of Los Angeles County foster care. Fifteen years of navigating special education followed, a process she calls a high-stakes negotiation in which parents have no real data, and schools offer instructional minutes instead of outcomes.
Since 2015, she has led real estate and development work across Texas, most recently as founder of RubiCrown Development focused on mid-sized Texas cities. In March 2025, frustrated by her own children’s experience in one of Texas’s highest-rated public-school districts, she drafted the plan that became Texas TransformED.
Outside of work, Robbye is deeply grounded in faith, inspired by classical literature, and energized by big ideas. She and her husband Shawn endowed the First Gen Champions Scholarship at Texas Tech, where Robbye served on the Alumni Association National Board from 2021 to 2025. They are also on the building committee at St. Gregory the Theologian Orthodox Christian Church, and Robbye served as the Superintendent of Sunday School there for six years. They are parents to four children.
