adult-learners
(3)
Sara Leoni
Sara Leoni is the founder and CEO of Ziplines Education, a Bay Area career accelerator that partners with 30-plus universities to deliver industry-recognized certificate programs in fields like AI, project management, and digital marketing. A former Division I softball player at UNLV and ex-CEO of the $50M course-materials company Rafter, she raised a $6.4M Series A in 2023-2024 to help close the digital skills gap and has helped more than 20,000 adult learners retool their careers. She frames learning as a zipline: intimidating, exhilarating, and continuous, with a clear start and a clear landing.
Brian Hartnack
Brian Hartnack is the co-founder and CEO of Archer Education, a higher-education growth firm that helps colleges and universities recruit, enroll and retain online and adult learners. A Cornell history major who cut his teeth in the late-90s dot-com scene at eToys, Gifts.com and Rent.com (sold to eBay for $415M in 2005), he launched the company that became Archer in 2006. Two decades on, the firm has worked with 200+ institutions, managed 1,000+ online programs, and connected millions of students to degrees - with Hartnack arguing that the winners in education marketing pair data infrastructure with authentic storytelling.
Fernando Bleichmar
Fernando Bleichmar is the CEO of Risepoint, the online program management company formerly known as Academic Partnerships, which helps regional universities build and grow online degree programs for working adults. He joined in 2022 after running the U.S. higher education business at Cengage, serving on the leadership team at Elsevier Health Sciences, and spending his first decade in strategy consulting at Boston Consulting Group. The son of educators who founded a school in Mexico City, he frames the company's work around closing the access and affordability gap in American higher education.