Educator Forever

Jan Helson is a business leader and education innovator who spent more than two decades helping build Golden Foods and Golden Brands, her family's niche food manufacturing company, into a $200 million global business. In 2013, two years after selling the company, Jan co-founded Global Game Changers, building on two award-winning children's books that she co-authored with her daughter Rachel. Today...

Sammy Gonzalez Zeira is the Founder and CEO of Young Musicians Unite, the nation’s largest provider of free music education. Since founding YMU in 2013, Sammy has grown the organization to serve 21,166 students weekly across 131 partnering schools in Miami-Dade County, reaching more than 71,400 students to date. He has also personally raised more than $35 million for music education and continues...

Paul McKee is a former K-12 teacher turned education entrepreneur who has spent more than 20 years building and growing online education businesses. He is the founder of FreeWorksheets.com , a free resource platform created to help teachers, parents, and homeschoolers access classroom materials without memberships or paywalls. Along the way, Paul has worked extensively in SEO, digital publishing,...

Hi everyone, welcome back to Educator Forever. Episode 200. Wow! 200 episodes. It’s been such a pleasure hosting this show over the past four years. Today I'm doing something different — no guests . Instead, I want to talk about a framework I've been developing for a long time, one I built out of my own experience as a teacher, a curriculum designer, and now someone getting a doctorate in learning...

If I asked you to name the skills that make teachers successful outside of the classroom, you might say something like communication, or curriculum design, or organization, and those are real. We learn so many transferable skills as classroom teachers, but after working with tens of thousands of teachers who have successfully transitioned to expand their impact beyond the classroom. I've been thin...

Alex Mozes is the CEO of Gravity Learning, a workforce development company using cognitive science to help managers actually change how they lead. Before Gravity, Alex founded Sheprd.io , a fractional operations consultancy helping companies solve scaling challenges from early‑stage through IPO. Nowadays he brings that same obsession with real‑world impact to Gravity Learning—building programs HR...

Jenelle Rawlins is the founder of Janelle Marie Web Design and Branding. She helps service businesses who have outgrown their current website and want to work with more premium clients. She specializes in custom logo design and website makeovers so that her clients have the confidence, authority and messaging. In our discussion, we talk about how Janelle taught for 16 years before getting into web...

There comes a moment for many teachers in their careers when the classroom no longer feels like the right fit. It can show up as burnout or exhaustion. Or it might be a curiosity or feeling that there’s something else out there for you. If you’re a teacher considering a career change, you’re likely wondering what’s next. The great news is you don’t have to leave your passion for education behind....

Monica Rollins is the founder and CEO of Rooted, a wellness collective. She partners with preschool programs to give teachers what traditional SEL training misses: practical nervous system literacy, trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness practices, and the co-regulation skills needed to lead calm, connected classrooms. Her approach is grounded in brain science, honors cultural responsiveness and cen...

Luba Patlakh is a speech and language pathologist, myofunctional therapist, and founder of Kidology. She's also an entrepreneur, podcast host, and children's book author. Luba has expanded her mission beyond one-on-one services through education, content creation, and community building. She is the host of the Growth Lab podcast, author of the children's book Bobo Wears a bow tie and creator of th...

Chinon Maria is an artist, educator, and founder of Art World Explorer Kids. For the past 15 years, she has dedicated her work to empowering and teaching children across the globe about the power of art. In this episode, Chinon tells Lily how became such a major part of her life and educator journey. She also discusses how she balances her successful art career while being an educator. For all lin...

Rob Heller is a successful entrepreneur, youth development innovator, and founder of the Boost Program, a comprehensive personal development curriculum designed to equip teens and young adults with the essential life, social, and mental health skills that traditional education overlooks. Drawing from a century of personal development wisdom—distilling the teachings of Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill,...

Julianna Burmesch is a former principal, speech pathologist, brain development trainer, and parent educator. She is also the author of Life with Less of Me, a memoir about the connection between trauma and long-term physical and mental health. Julianna and I discuss her education journey and her studies in communication disorders. We also go through her book, talking about the long terms effects o...

Kurtis Hewson is an author and the co-founder of Jigsaw Learning, a consultancy that teaches educators its Collaborative Response frameworks. With over a decade of experience as an administrator, Kurtis has championed the call for collaborative structures in schools to ensure success for all students. In this episode, Kurtis and I discuss the creation of the Collaborative Response frameworks and h...

Dr. Abby Emerson is a former fifth-grade teacher and now an assistant professor of childhood education at Hunter College at the City University of New York. She is the author of the book, From Anti-Racism to Abolition: Professional Learning for Liberating Schools, which is a book coming out this fall for educators who are curious about how to better use professional development to work towards rac...

Matt Wilkins is a former middle school teacher, scientist, and founder of Galactic Polymath Education Studio. He has spent the last 10 years trying to translate cutting-edge research into engaging videos, and fun, standards-aligned lessons that a non-specialist can teach. In our discussion, Wilkins notes his work focuses on translating cutting-edge research into accessible lessons for K-12 classro...

Dr. Niki Elliott is a clinical professor and director of the Center for Embodied Equity and Neurodiversity at the University of San Diego. A leading voice in neurodiversity and trauma-informed education, she has trained thousands of teachers, school counselors, and helping professionals worldwide to better support children with learning differences, mental health diagnoses, trauma histories, and b...

Josh Davidson is the creator and co-founder of Night Zookeeper, an award-winning online learning program that helps children fall in love with reading, writing, and creativity through games and storytelling. Josh is passionate about giving kids the confidence to see themselves as writers and creators, and he speaks regularly about the power of play, stories, and co-created worlds in education. Jos...

I have spent decades — decades — studying how people learn. I've read the research, I've built the frameworks, I'm literally getting a graduate degree in learning design from Johns Hopkins right now. And I still catch myself thinking: I need to know more before I'm ready to start. Ironic, right? Someone who studies learning... afraid to learn out loud. But here's what's wild: that fear? That "not...

If you've been thinking about starting an education business, it can feel really overwhelming knowing how to start, and most people really only see businesses when they're polished and successful. And it can feel intimidating, because we see these really well put together businesses that feel streamlined, and we don't see the messiness that goes into creating them. And so today I want to normalize...

Monika Robinson is an Educator Wellbeing Coach with 17 years of experience across school systems. Her career includes roles as an elementary teacher, instructional coach, nonprofit director, and consultant giving her a deep understanding of the challenges educators face and what it takes to thrive in demanding environments. In our conversation, Monika and I talk about educator wellness and how she...

Will Staton began his career as a high school history teacher, and has worked as a teacher, Dean and administrator in Memphis, New York City and Washington, DC. Most recently, Will worked as an independent nonprofit consultant. Now he is now running for Congress as an independent in central New York, where he lives in Syracuse with his wife and two daughters. In our talk, Will and I discuss his jo...

Brett "Mr. Eco" Edwards is the founder and Chief Eco Officer of the Eco Hero show. He created Mr. Eco in college and has brought the brand to life since 2014. He is an environmentalist, an educator, an entrepreneur, a Grammy-voting member, a YouTuber and a philanthropist. Brett and I talk about how he created the Eco Hero show and his climate change activism. He talks about the shows’s growing suc...

Brittanie Bates is a curriculum developer, educator, principal and parent, who's redefining what's possible in global online education. As founding academic head and principal of the global online school, Crimson Global Academy's U.S. diploma pathway, she has built an online learning model that proves digital education is a powerful catalyst for breaking down barriers and unleashing student potent...

Rob Scheer is the founder and CEO of Comfort Cases, an international nonprofit dedicated to bringing dignity and hope to youth in foster care. His and the organization’s mission is clear: to eliminate the heartbreaking and dehumanizing practice of children being handed a trash bag to carry their belongings when entering the foster care system. Since founding Comfort Cases in 2013, Rob and his team...