special-education
(10)
Say It With Your Eyes
Tobii Dynavox turns eye movements into speech for people who have lost their voice. Here is how a Pittsburgh-and-Stockholm company built the tools that let hundreds of thousands of people be heard.
The Brooklyn Nonprofit Building a One-Stop Village Around Every Child
Yeled V'Yalda began with 78 children. Four decades later, its answer to fragmented family services is a network where preschool, therapy, nutrition and parent support can meet under one institutional roof.
Marker Learning
Marker Learning is a New York-based company that makes learning-disability evaluations more accessible and less time-consuming. Founded by Stefan Bauer and Emily Yudofsky - both diagnosed with dyslexia as children - the company began by bringing remote, lower-cost psychological assessments for conditions like dyslexia and ADHD to families and schools. It has since built an AI-assisted report-writing platform for special education teams and school psychologists that turns referral and assessment documents into structured, citation-backed draft reports, cutting report writing from hours to minutes while keeping clinical judgment with the evaluator.
Stefan Bauer
Stefan Bauer is the co-founder and CEO of Marker Learning, a New York City telehealth company that connects families and schools with licensed psychologists for learning disability evaluations, cutting the traditional cost and turnaround time of assessments. A Yale School of Management MBA and former McKinsey and Morgan Stanley professional, Bauer co-founded the company with Emily Yudofsky in 2021; it has since raised $19.7 million in total funding, including a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2023.
Scientific Learning, a Carnegie Learning Company
Scientific Learning, now part of Carnegie Learning, builds neuroscience-based reading and language software that rewires how struggling readers process language. Its flagship Fast ForWord program treats reading difficulty at its root - the brain's ability to process sound and sequence information - rather than drilling worksheets. Born from lab research by four scientists in 1996 and acquired by Carnegie Learning in 2020, the company has delivered cognitive-skills and reading interventions to students in more than 40 countries, backed by decades of peer-reviewed research.
Huddle Up
Huddle Up (formerly DotCom Therapy) partners with K-12 school districts to deliver high-quality speech therapy, occupational therapy, mental health, and school psychology services for students with IEPs. Combining licensed providers in all 50 states with a proprietary technology platform, the company offers both virtual and in-person care to close special-education staffing gaps. Founded in 2015 to reach students in remote Alaska, it has delivered more than 1 million therapy sessions and now serves close to 1,000 school districts nationwide.
Omar Dawood
Omar Dawood is the CEO and board member of Huddle Up, the pediatric digital health company formerly known as DotCom Therapy. A physician with four degrees and a long run through the digital mental-health world (Ginger, Calm, BetterUp), he now leads a team delivering speech, occupational, mental-health and special-education therapy to children across nearly 1,000 US school districts. Under his watch the company rebranded, closed a Series C led by Kayne Anderson Growth Capital, and crossed one million care sessions.
Parallel
Parallel (Parallel Learning) is a New York-based special education company that connects school districts with licensed clinicians - school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, behavioral counselors, and specialized instructors - through a proprietary teletherapy and case-management platform. Founded in 2021 by Diana Heldfond, who was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia as a child, Parallel helps schools deliver legally required IEP services to students with learning and thinking differences when in-person staff are scarce. The company has raised about $48.9 million and reported that 98% of its students met or exceeded their IEP goals in the 2024-2025 school year.
Diana Heldfond DiGia
Diana Heldfond DiGia is the founder and CEO of Parallel, the first tech-forward provider of special education care in the United States. Diagnosed with severe dyslexia and ADHD at seven, she built Parallel to deliver virtual psychoeducational assessments, teletherapy, and specialized instruction to K-12 school districts. The company now serves more than 10,000 students across 25 states, has raised $48.9M including a $20M Series B led by Valspring Capital, and reports that 98% of its students meet or exceed their IEP goals. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 (Education, 2024) honoree.
MEandMine
MEandMine is a Silicon Valley startup that uses AI and neuroscience-backed games to surface the silent struggles of K-12 students. Its platform delivers ten minutes a day of personalized, gamified skill-building, while an AI engine flags psychological risk by analyzing 160+ in-game behaviors, giving teachers and counselors real-time signals for early intervention.