Edtech Insiders

Send us a textBridgette Leslie is the Co-Founder, CEO of IEP&Me, Inc. Bridgette had spent her career as a special educator, focusing on creating inclusive classrooms, fostering self-awareness advocacy with her students, and triggering innovation in several school settings. As an entrepreneur, she's been accepted into the ODX Accelerator, achieved a NewSchools Venture Fund grant, and recently completed the Techstars JP Morgan Chase Female Founders Catalyst program.

Send us a textMelda Akin is the CEO and founder of D14.AI and STEM training organization Sirius Labs.D14.AI provides an AI-driven software platform for healthcare clinics, gyms, and logistics companies to optimize their workforce and manage business operations in an easy, secure and affordable way.  Before launching D14.AI into Dubai’s burgeoning tech start-up scene, Akin was a software developer, system analyst, lecturer in computer and software engineering departments, project manager and the youngest director of an international tech company.Melda Akin graduated from BSc Computer Engineering, and MSc in Intelligent Engineering Systems, focusing on Artificial Intelligence. Akin is the first woman in the world to organize and conduct AI and machine learning training for women in the MENA region. collaborating with the Cyber Defense and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.Akin has won many awards for her work: she was selected among 200 candidates as one of the eight best female-founded start-ups in the Middle East and Africa region by Standard Chartered Bank, as well as a  ‘New Entrepreneur of the year 2020’ by Gulf Capital, one of the Top 10 Women Behind Middle Eastern Tech Brands list by Forbes Middle East in both 2021 and 2022, and as one of the best seven women in tech entrepreneurship in Turkey by Microsoft.Finally, Melda Akin serves as a mentor for the United Nations & for the UAE's NAMA Women Advancement organization.Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer

Send us a textKim Smith is the founder of LearnerStudio, an equity-focused education investment studio being incubated inside Cambiar Education. She is also the founder and CEO of the Pahara Institute, a national nonprofit that aims to identify, strengthen, and sustain diverse high-potential leaders who are transforming public education. Immediately prior, she was co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners. Earlier in her career she was a founding team member at Teach For America, created an AmeriCorps program serving community-based leaders in youth development, led a trade show start-up, and did a stint in online learning at Silicon Graphics. After completing her MBA at Stanford, she co-founded the NewSchools Venture Fund, a philanthropy focused on catalyzing a bipartisan, cross-sector community of entrepreneurial change agents for public education.Kim was featured in Newsweek’s report on the “Women of the 21st Century” as “the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century.”Recommended Resources:The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy by Anand GirardharasThe Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

Send us a textAnada Lakra is the co-founder and CEO of BoldVoice. Her mission is to empower every non-native English speaker to fulfill their potential through confident English. . BoldVoice is an app that helps learners to improve their English speaking clarity and confidence through videos from Hollywood accent coaches and instant feedback from speech artificial intelligence.Previously, Anada built and launched 5 products (1 IPO, 1 exit via acquisition) in both enterprise and consumer, across verticals including retail, entertainment, and recruiting. She was recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education, and holds a BA from Yale and MBA from Harvard Business School.Recommended Resources:How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do―And What It Says About You by Katherine D. KinzlerAtomic Habits by James Clear

Send us a textRyan Craig is a Managing Director at Achieve Partners and was formerly an MD at University Ventures. Ryan’s commentary on where the puck is going in education and workforce regularly appears in the biweekly Gap Letter, Forbes, and Inside Higher Education. He is the author of the upcoming book Apprentice Nation: How the "Earn and Learn" Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America (November 2023). He is also author of A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College (2018), which describes the critical importance of last-mile training and the emergence of bootcamps, income share programs, staffing and apprenticeship models as preferred pathways to good first digital jobs and was named in the Wall Street Journal as one the Books of the Year for 2018. Ryan’s first book was College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Higher Education (2015), which profiles the coming shift toward competency-based education and hiring. Ryan is a co-founder of Apprenticeships for America, a national nonprofit dedicated to scaling apprenticeships across the U.S. economy.Previously, Ryan led the Education & Training sector at Warburg Pincus. His prior experience in higher education was at Columbia University. Ryan also founded and built Wellspring, a national network of boarding schools and summer camps for overweight and obese children, adolescents, and young adults. He began his career at McKinsey & Co.Ryan received bachelor's degrees summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University, and his law degree from the Yale Law School.

Send us a textAl Kingsley has over 30 years’ experience in educational technology and digital safeguarding.For the last 25 years Al has been the Group Managing Director of NetSupport, an international software company developing market-leading software solutions used by over 18 million customers, designed to support the effective use of instructional technology in classrooms alongside eSafety technologies to safeguard students online.Al writes for a range of international titles on all aspects of education, with a particular focus on Digital Strategy, the use of EdTech, Blended Learning, Safeguarding and broader strategic planning.He is the author of “My Secret Edtech Diary” and “My School Governance Handbook” and the co-host of the “EdTech Shared” podcast.Recommended Resources:The Innovator's Dillema: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. ChristensenDisrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen

Send us a textSheryl Cababa is a multi-disciplinary design strategist with more than two decades of experience and has worked extensively in human-centered design within the social impact space. She specializes in developing tools and methods for designers to expand their mindsets beyond user-centered design, anticipate unintended consequences, and engage in systems thinking. Some of her recent work with the Gates Foundation includes leading student voice research to inform the K-12 Balance The Equation Grand Challenge, working with Gates Foundation teams to provide equity-centered technical assistance to their grantees. She’s worked with IKEA, Microsoft, frog design and at Substantial, A hybrid-first Insights, Design + Development Studio, where she is the Chief Design Officer. Her newest book, Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers, came out in Feb 2023; you can find a link to it in the shownotes for this episode .Recommended ResourcesClosing the Loop: Systems Thinking for DesignersGholdy Muhammad, Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

Send us a textIn this Week in Edtech, Ben and Alex talk about the rise of open-source LLMs and what it means for education, Sam Altman's Congressional testimony and coming AI regulations, and  systemic changes affecting the entire Edtech venture landscape.We also speak to Hussainatu (Hussa) Blake, who leads Edtech and Workforce for the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation about global AI and Edtech We check in with Arman Jaffer, Tom Whitnah and Corey Crouch, the founding team of the powerful AI Teaching tool Brisk Teaching.

Send us a textAdrian Ridner is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Study.com and an industry leader in education technology.Adrian has created the leading online learning platform in the world at delivering a personalized learning experience to students and teachers from grade school through college and beyond. Adrian has spent the past two decades bringing together academic experts across all subjects, with the leading technologists and learning scientists to build the most innovative micro-learning platform with the sole purpose to eliminate the most common educational barriers and make education accessible.Adrian has been committed to advancing personalized and engaging learning at scale for students of varying needs and diverse backgrounds to help level the playing field. Study.com's short video lessons and online courses help students achieve their educational goals and degrees needed to unlock economic opportunities. As an Argentine immigrant, Adrian is particularly proud that Study.com helps students, teachers and parents in the U.S. and around the world. He gets excited about each learner that shares their personal story, from every corner of the globe, about how Study.com empowered them to achieve their education and career dreams.In 2017, Adrian launched the Working Scholars® program as an accelerated pathway to a bachelor's degree offering flexibility, convenience and little to no student debt for working adults. The program has expanded nationally to dozens of cities, uplifting underserved communities one college graduate at a time. Adrian is very proud of the impact Working Scholars is having and humbled that is was named CA Non-Profit of the Year.

Send us a textKatie Kirsch is a designer, engineer, and social entrepreneur. At Stanford, IDEO, and Designer Fund, she has launched several products, programs, and ventures in education. A few favorite projects have included working & living at a K-12 boarding school in India, scaling a menstrual healthcare organization in Uganda, and road​-​tripping across the US for 14 weeks in an RV to teach leadership workshops for 1200 girls. Most recently, Katie founded Twenty, a coaching & community platform that empowers young adults to crush their twenties. Katie holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Product Design Engineering from Stanford.Recommended Resources:The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg JayWhat I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig