k12-education
(6)
Deb Hannah Keeps Changing the Aisle
From Kotex packaging and Starbucks snack shelves to Shoe Carnival’s customer data and K12’s virtual classrooms, Deb Hannah has spent a career studying how a choice gets made - then rebuilding the path around it.
Sanford Kenyon
Sanford Kenyon is an education-technology executive who led BloomBoard, a Pittsburgh-based company that helps teachers advance their careers and pay by earning micro-credentials tied to real classroom practice. After roughly five years in executive roles at PayPal and eBay, he spent more than a decade in K-12 software - as President & CEO of SchoolMessenger (Reliance Communications) and a VP in Blackboard's K-12 business - before joining BloomBoard in 2015 as Chief Revenue Officer and becoming CEO in early 2017.
Odyssey
Odyssey is a New York-based education technology company that builds the software states use to run school-choice programs. Its platform administers education savings accounts (ESAs) and microgrant programs end-to-end - guiding parents through eligibility and applications, verifying identity in real time, disbursing state funds into digital wallets, and running regulated e-commerce marketplaces where families can spend on tuition, tutoring, curriculum, and technology. Founded in 2021 by former teacher and school-choice attorney Joseph Connor, Odyssey administers programs across states including Iowa, Idaho, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Utah, Wyoming, and Texas, and has helped families access hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding.
Joseph Connor
Joseph Connor is the founder and CEO of Odyssey, a New York based technology company that helps states run school choice programs like education savings accounts (ESAs). A former classroom teacher at KIPP and Rocketship who went on to Notre Dame Law School and worked on the landmark Espinoza v. Montana Supreme Court case, Connor built Odyssey to make public education dollars easy for families to access. The platform has helped more than 140,000 students across seven states tap into over $375 million in state funding, and raised a $10 million Series A in 2024 led by Tusk Venture Partners with backing from a16z's Katherine Boyle.
BloomBoard
BloomBoard is a Pittsburgh-based education technology company that helps K-12 school districts grow, advance, and retain their own educators. Its platform turns on-the-job classroom experience into pathways for teacher certification and college degrees, pairing districts with higher-education partners so paraprofessionals, substitutes, and support staff can earn credentials while continuing to work and get paid. Built originally around competency-based micro-credentials developed with the nonprofit Digital Promise, BloomBoard now runs turnkey, district-branded 'Your-District U' programs aimed at solving the national teacher shortage from within.
Study.com
Study.com is a Mountain View-based online learning platform that breaks subjects into short, animated video lessons and college-credit-eligible courses. Founded in 2002 by Adrian Ridner and Ben Wilson, it now serves more than 30 million learners, teachers and working adults each month, with one of the largest catalogs of ACE-approved courses of any provider. Its mission is to make education accessible and affordable - especially for the underserved students its founder once was.