My name is Carly Daniels. I spent 24 years working in Test Development Services at the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). During my career, I have developed expertise in technical writing and editing, exam blueprinting, test development, and working with content experts to craft multiple-choice questions (MCQs) that are free from flaws and that focus on the application of knowledge. As I learned more about medical education and considered how changes in medicine will ultimately affect health professions education, I became more interested in how people learn and other, non-MCQ methods of assessing knowledge. This led me to pursue my M.Ed. in Educational Psychology.

In 2024, I took a mid-career “gap year” to hike the Appalachian Trail. I traversed 1,500 miles of the nearly 2,200-mile trail, walking from Georgia to Connecticut in 5 months. The hike gave me restorative time in nature as well as a renewed sense of my mental and physical strength, perseverance, and ability to form strong connections with others. This experience also gave me time to think about the challenges of giving and receiving feedback and to consider how I could leverage my personal and professional communication skills, as well as lessons learned from my time as a people manager, to help others in this rigorous area.

I continually seek opportunities to use my academic knowledge combined with my professional experience to assist faculty in selecting and utilizing a variety of tools to educate and assess their students.