The broader story

Dr. Fields grew up in North St. Louis County, attended preschool within Ferguson-Florissant's boundaries, and has ties to St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley. He began his career in education as a student teacher in Ferguson-Florissant.

As a first-year principal he returned to Koch Elementary, the school he attended as a child, and led it through the year of the Ferguson unrest. At Webster Groves, he widened what students could access with the staff and capacity already present. At Kirkwood, he treated human resources as the operating system of a district: retention, labor agreements, belonging, and a paid parental-leave policy adopted during his tenure.

In 2025, he returned to Ferguson-Florissant as superintendent. The story is not nostalgia; it is accountability: knowing a place from multiple levels, and being answerable to it.

Long before “experience design” became common language in education, Dr. Fields was working across visual communication, branding, writing, video, and web design. That creative background continues to shape how he approaches leadership: not only as a set of decisions, but as the deliberate design of environments, messages, and experiences.

It shows up in the work itself. A dissertation became a feature-length documentary. Research became books. A convening for Black educators became a designed experience rather than a conference. Stakeholder dynamics became a playable simulation. Professional learning is sequenced, participatory, and built for the room, because he has spent years making things people actually use.

Freelance creative work spanning graphic and print design, brand strategy, videography, WordPress and web design, and the Adobe Creative Suite, beginning in 2008, including contracted videography work for a major network television station.