What Students Want

Our guest today is Dr. Brenton White. Dr. White is the Superintendent/ CEO of A+ Charter Schools, INC. He has more than 23 years of experience in education, serving the last five years as a superintendent. In this episode, Dr. White discusses the challenges of being a leader, the importance of education for underserved communities, how competition improves school performance and gives insight into...

Our guest today is Amit Patel. Amit is is a Managing Partner at Owl Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests in the world's leading education technology companies such as Byju, dreambox, Newsela, Quizzlet, and more: https://owlvc.com/portfolio.htmlIn this episode, we talk about how the education technology infrastructure investments years ago create the conditions for the EdTech boom today, w...

Our guest today is Deborah Quazzo, the cofounder and managing partner of GSV Ventures, one of the earliest and more prestigious venture funds investing in the entire spectrum of education from PreK to Gray including companies that we all use daily such as Coursera, Classdojo, Clever, Quizziz and many more. Deborah is also the cofounder of the annual annual ASU+GSV Summit which attracts over 5000 v...

Our guest today is Daniel Pianko. Daniel is a Managing Director at Achieve and University Ventures. He has a long experience adviser and innovator in student finance, medical education, and postsecondary education. In this episode, we talk about how people's focus is shifting from the inputs to the output of education, how personalization is a misplaced idea, and how to successfully invest in job-...

Our guest today is Mercedes Bent, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mercedes is focused on education and consumer early stage investing. Previously she was working in VR and a General Manager at General Assembly. In this episode, we explore how EdTech is shifting and giving more power to parents and students. We look at social learning and gaming, which together offer a lot of promise for th...

Our guest today is Rebecca Kaden. Rebecca is a Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures. She has a particular interest in education and an extremely deep understanding of the evolving EdTech landscape. Rebecca began her career as a journalist and prior to USV was a General Partner at Maveron, a consumer focused early stage fund. In this episode, we talk about how new technology can decentralize m...

Our guest today is Benoit Wirz, a partner at Brighteye Ventures, the leading European EdTech venture firm. In this episode, we talk about the evolving EdTech landscape in Europe as well as the unique attributes of rising European education companies. Here are some resources mentioned in our discussion:Citibank study citing the Edtech Opportunity Gap - https://www.citifirst.com.hk/home/upload/citi_...

Our guest today is Jinal Jhaveri. Jinal is the co-founder and Chairman of Schoolmint, a venture partner at Runa Capital and also co-founder and CEO at enable.us. In this episode, we talk about Jinal's lessons growing Schoolmint, how he channeled the tailwinds of the school choice movements, and what his experience can offer for schools today. Listen and take note of Jinal's obsessive focus on the...

SummaryOur guest today is Jennifer Carolan. Jennifer started her career as a classroom teacher in a Chicago district. She then moved to California to attend Stanford, and there got inspired to use her teaching experience in support od tech founders. So she joined NewSchools Venture Fund where she learned the craft of VC, while also co-creating and teaching a course at Stanford. After that, Jennife...

Our guest today is John Danner. John is an investor in Edtech and the Future of Work. During the last 3 years he has participated in investments that have impacted many learner lives, like Lambda School or Outschool. Before being an investor, John started Netgravity, an internet advertising firm that went public and was sold to Doubleclick now Google. Then he did a U-turn and became a teacher in a...

Our guest today is Andrew Barry. Andrew started off at KPMG where he built out their training, then he created Curious Lion where he and his team help the likes of Pinterest and many other companies to create corporate training programs. I first met Andrew when we were both taking an online writing course called Write of Passage, and I have been eager to talk about learning online ever since. In t...

Our guest today is Indra Sofian, the cofounder fo Sora School, an online project-based-learning high school. In this episode, we catch up after our first chat 2 years ago. Then the school was just starting, now there is an innovative yet mature high school operating entirely online. It is the first digital-native high school I have studied closely, so I wanted to dig into their entire operating sy...

Our guest today is Cam Stottler. He is the Executive Director of North Lakes Academy Charter School, a K-12 tuition free school located in Forest Lake, MN.The school has been in operation for over 20 years, implementing an educational program that is challenging, developmentally appropriate, and catering to the needs and passions of their students. Given the small class sizes, each student receive...

In this episode, we catch up on the last 2 years since our first podcast interview in August 2019. We talk about how Prenda uses a unique learning model with a mix of blended learning, PBL and inquiry-based learning to increase confidence and curiosity. We see how they enhance grit and perseverance, helping learners to stick with their problems longer, as Albert Einstein would say. Some interestin...

Our guest today is Felix Ohswald. He is the CEO of GoStudent, an online tutoring company that just raised 70 million euros and is growing like a rocketship in Europe. In this episode, we talk about the origin story of GoStudent, Felix's views on what makes a learning experience successful, his tips on operating a growing educational institutions, and his regional and global plans to consolidate th...

SummaryOur guest today is Victoria Ransom, the CEO at Prisma. Victoria is a serial entrepreneur from New Zealand, having sold her last company to Google and is currently living in the U S with her partner and co-founder Alain Chuard. We are going to talk about their newest venture Prisma, a full-time virtual program (with a physical component) for middle school learners. Prisma is a full-stack con...

SummaryOur guest today is Ryan Delk, the co-founder and CEO at Primer. Ryan spent the last decade building tech companies at Square, Gumroad and Omni. He has now co-founded Primer to free the next generation of kids to be more ambitious, more creative, and to think for themselves, starting with homeschool. In this episode, we discuss Ryan's ambitious plans for the future of Primer, how parents are...

Our guest today is Kelly from Galileo XP. Kelly and her co-founder Vlad redesigned school from scratch. Galileo a global online school soon to have access to physical spaces as well. Listen and take note of how Kelly and the Galileo team transitions students into self-directed learning, inject learning experiences with passion and provide a 10-star experience for everyone that joins. Quotes:9:35 -...

Summary:Our guest today is Brian Tobal. Brian used to be a teacher at the Harlem Children's Zone, then worked as a researcher, and then he spent the last few years building lots of educational software, and curriculum for schools, universities and businesses. Now, Brian has started SchoolHouse with his co-founder, to have parents get together and create microschools or learning pods in their own h...

It has become popular to sneer at our education system’s factory model. We call for the death of schools in favor of Airbnb-like learning communities. Our SAT/ACT testing culture, our boring direct-instruction content-dumping, our mental health issues - these are easy targets. But schools can thrive, and many are doing so. Only the job of the school, and the teacher, needs to change. To accompany...

Our guest today is Trevor McKendrick, Chief of Staff at Lambda School, where students graduate and get the job because they got the skills - and it’s free until they get a job paying over $50K. In this podcast, Trevor goes to the heart of “the customer experience” and details how everything they do is framed in light of reducing the risk and elevating the satisfaction of the customer - their stude...

In education, the obvious place to cut your teeth is as a teacher. Joel Rose knows the classroom well. He began as a 5th-grade teacher in Houston before moving into a variety of leadership roles in education. Joel is a respected commentator on education through his published articles and as a speaker at conferences. He is currently spearheading the nonprofit “New Classrooms,” which reimagines clas...

From where do contemporary, resilient changes begin - from a top-down mandate, or from a bottom-up, tech-driven evolution? Today’s guest, Matt Greenfield, is an investor in entrepreneurial companies that drive transformative social outcomes through the power of using technology in education. He sifts through fascinating trends and prophetic scenarios as we discuss everything from the Common Core t...

If you had to pick your moniker, being called a 'guru' by Fortune Magazine and a 'maverick' by CNN would not be a bad place to start. Our guest today, Clark Aldrich, is on the frontline of the learning revolution. He is the author of five books and is known for award-winning projects building custom “Short Sims” using a methodology he has pioneered. Clark’s work pedigree uniquely positions him to...