1. Insights

    BrightChamps: The Window to Nextgen Skills

    View More

  2. Programming

    ASU+GSV Summit 2022

    April 4-6, 2022 in San Diego

Our Team

The sector’s preeminent collection of talent & experience—uniquely qualified to partner with, and to elevate, EdTech’s most important companies

Investment Team All Strategic Advisors
Deborah Quazzo

Deborah Quazzo

Managing Partner San Francisco, CA & Chicago, IL

Deborah is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures, a venture fund investing in education and workforce skills technologies that are disrupting the $7 Trillion global  sector. The fund invests globally — primarily in the US and India. Deborah has been twice named to Insider’s list of top 100 seed investors. In addition, she is co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit, The preeminent gathering of leaders in education and workforce skilling. Now in its 15th year, the ASU+GSV Summit celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “preK to Gray” learning and workforce skills landscape and attracts over 5,300 live and 10,000 virtual attendees.

Deborah’s current boards include Ascend Learning, BrightChamps, Classplus, Class Technologies, Degreed, Dreamscape Learn, Ellucian, Mattilda, Physicswallah, Simplilearn and Turnitin. She previously served on the board of Aakash Educational Services Ltd.  She is a member of the boards of The Common Ground Foundation, The Khan Academy Thought Leadership Council, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and The Yidan Prize Foundation Advisory Committee. She previously served on a number of education organization boards including The Chicago Board of Education (appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel) and KIPP: Chicago.

Deborah graduated cum laude with a BA in history from Princeton University in 1982 and an MBA from Harvard University in 1987.

Michael Cohn

Michael Cohn

Co-Founder & Partner Chicago, IL & San Francisco, CA

Michael Cohn is Partner and founding member at GSV Ventures. He began working with GSV in 2011 and co-founded GSV Ventures in 2016. Michael sits on the boards of BEGIN, Quillbot, Lightneer, and Toucan, and is a board observer at Photomath, Class Technologies, Degreed, Remind, Valenture Institute, Intellispark, and Stride Funding. He helped lead fundraising efforts for both GSV Ventures’ institutional funds, closing on $97M and $180M, respectively. Michael’s responsibilities include fund management for GSV, investment prospect generation, investment structuring and execution, capital raising, due diligence of potential acquisitions, and oversight of the Firm’s finance function.

Prior to GSV Ventures, Michael was a Managing Director at GSV Advisors, co-managing an angel portfolio of 50 learning and talent technology companies and scaling the ASU+ GSV Summit, an annual event now in its 12th year, with over 15,000 in attendees, that celebrates innovators across the global “PreK to Gray” digital learning and skills landscape.

Michael holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management (Northwestern University) and a BBA from the University of Michigan. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife Shawna and their sons Taylor and Hayden.

Julia Stiglitz

Julia Stiglitz

Previously Partner, GSV Ventures San Francisco, CA

Julia brings an extraordinary breadth of “PreK to Gray” education and workforce innovation insights to the GSV Ventures Advisory Board. Prior to her years as Partner at GSV Ventures, Julia was VP at Coursera, where she started and scaled Coursera’s enterprise business sector, Coursera’s fastest growing business line. Julia was Coursera’s first business hire, leading its early work around monetization and global expansion. Her previous experience includes managing the Google Apps for Education team, being a Program Director for Teach for America, and teaching 4th grade in East San Jose.

Julia has a BA from Pomona, and an MBA and MA in education from Stanford University. She is based in San Francisco.

Related Press & Blog Posts

Michael Moe

Michael Moe

Advisor Woodside, CA
Michael Moe is the Founder and CEO of GSV, a growth-focused investment platform. GSV has invested in game-changing businesses such as Facebook, Twitter, Snap, Palantir and Spotify. GSV has several funds focused on the digital learning sector and has invested in Coursera, Chegg, Course Hero, Masterclass, and Guild Education. GSV stands for “Global Silicon Valley,” inspired by the entrepreneurial mindset of Silicon Valley spreading throughout the world.
Michael is also the co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit, which Forbes called “the Davos of Education.” Additionally, Michael is on the Board of the National Football Foundation and the College Football Hall of Fame, Center for Education Reform, ClassDojo, Bookclub, FatBrain, Hi Solutions, and is an advisor to Arizona State University.

Before GSV, Michael was the Founder and CEO of ThinkEquity Partners, Head of Global Growth Research at Merrill Lynch, and was voted to be on the Institutional All American Research Team and named “Best on the Street” by the Wall Street Journal.
Michael is the author of three books, “Finding the Next Starbucks”, “the Global Silicon Valley Handbook” and his most recent, “The Mission Corporation.”
Michael holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from the University of Minnesota and is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). He and his wife Bonnie live in Dallas, Texas where they moved to in 2021 after living in Silicon Valley for twenty-five years.

Related Press & Blog Posts

Jason Horne

Jason Horne

Partner New York, NY

Jason Horne is a Managing Director at GSV Ventures based in New York City. Prior to GSV Ventures Jason led Corporate Development for London-based TES Global, then backed by TPG Capital. Jason also has 8+ years of investment banking experience across GSV Advisors and Deloitte Corporate Finance, where he advised on a wide range of transactions across the PreK-12, Higher Ed, and enterprise learning and talent continuum.

Tess Manning

Tess Manning

Principal San Francisco, CA

Tess Manning is a Principal at GSV Ventures based in San Francisco. Tess joined GSV in September 2019 after graduating from Stanford Graduate School of Business in spring 2019 where she was a Teaching Assistant for “Diverse Leadership in Education.” Her Stanford summer was spent at GSV portfolio company, Pluralsight. Prior to business school, Tess was a client success and top sales executive at Andela, another GSV portfolio company, and was also the head of talent at Timehop, a mobile app with 25mm users that displays a user’s historical social media content.

Tess has a passion for dance and founded a 501(c)(3) that taught dance in New York City homeless shelters.

Thea Knobel

Thea Knobel

VP of Platform & GSV Cup Lead Vail, CO & Los Angeles, CA

Thea Knobel is the Vice President of Platform and GSV Cup Lead. She is focused on community, brand and social media strategy, strategic portfolio support for founders, and GSV-backed initiatives like leading the GSV Cup, a global pitch competition.

Thea has venture capital investment experience at 2 VC funds and the Techstars LA Accelerator. At Techstars Thea worked on the venture team for the LA Accelerator sourcing and evaluating startups. She also was a Marketing Associate in the program working with founders on designing their communications strategies.

Thea is passionate about education. Starting in high school she cross-age tutored lower school students. During her masters she worked with underserved high school students on their college applications. Now she guest lectures at the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

Thea graduated with honors awarded to 1% of graduate students from USC Marshall School of Business with a M.S. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. She also sits on the advisory board of ThinkNow, a technology-driven market research firm that provides multicultural insights. Thea is multilingual, a public speaker, and an avid world traveler.

Related Press & Blog Posts

Amanda Porter

Amanda Porter

Head of Talent Chicago, IL

As Head of Talent, Amanda supports talent acquisition, performance management, and development across GSV Venture Funds and the GSV portfolio companies.

Amanda previously led the cross-functional scaling of a higher-ed edtech startup, Packback, from a handful of team members to 80 employees. This is where her passion for intentionally building teams flourished and now she brings this focus to helping GSV portfolio companies with their talent strategy.

Amanda is a competitive marathoner and relishes creating goals and processes for talent acquisition and management. Through hard work and determination, Amanda cultivated relationships with brands like Nike and lululemon.

Amanda graduated from Lewis University where she ran on scholarship for cross country and track and holds a BA in Sports Management and a minor in Coaching.

Mujtaba Wani

Mujtaba Wani

Principal New York, NY

Mujtaba is a Principal at GSV Ventures. Prior to joining the firm, he spent three years with BlackRock’s private equity group, where he helped invest in companies including Rivian, Morphe, Cotiviti, and Asurion. Mujtaba graduated from Yale University in 2017 with a B.A. in Humanities. At Yale, he co-led the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund and was a Fellow with the Life Worth Living Program.

Related Press & Blog Posts

Margaret (Molly) Rowe

Margaret (Molly) Rowe

Associate New York, NY

Prior to joining GSV Ventures as an investment associate in July 2019, Molly worked as a summer associate at Keystone Capital, and has previous venture capital experience from her time as an MBA intern working for Connectivity Ventures Fund in New York.

Molly completed her MBA in 2019 from NYU Stern, and graduated Magna Cum Laude from George Washington University in 2017 with a degree in Information Systems and Technology Management.

Sophie Hoffman

Sophie Hoffman

Investor

Prior to joining GSV Ventures as an investor, Sophie spent four years at Goldman Sachs building a team that helps source and syndicate all of the firm’s direct, private-market investment opportunities, primarily to institutionalized family offices. She graduated from Dartmouth College Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in economics and psychology.

Sophie has a passion for behavioral economics and loves thinking about how to weave the decision sciences into new businesses to help them gain traction. She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts with two brothers, a sister, and a Goldendoodle named Roxy.

Kevin Zhang

Kevin Zhang

Principal San Francisco, CA

Kevin is a Principal at GSV Ventures based in San Francisco. Prior to joining the GSV team, he spent four years as a management consultant at Bain & Company, where he worked with clients in a variety of sectors including consumer products, technology, education non-profit, and private equity. Prior to Bain, he led a financial turnaround of The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation as the COO and General Manager.

Kevin is a 2015 graduate of Princeton University, where he earned an A.B. in Philosophy and was a member of the water polo team.

Claire Zau

Claire Zau

Vice President New York, NY

Claire is a Vice President on the GSV Ventures team based in New York City. She previously worked across both the GSV Ventures investment team and ASU+GSV Summit team, where she collaborated with thought leaders across the edtech ecosystem to develop program and thought leadership. She graduated from Stanford University in 2019 and received her Master’s from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education in 2020. At Penn, Claire was a Venture Fellow at Red & Blue Ventures and interned at Penn’s education accelerator Catalyst. She has previous work experience in tech (strategy and product) and finance (private equity and venture capital).

Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan

Managing Partner, Emerson Collective; former U.S. Secretary of Education Chicago, IL

Arne Duncan served as U.S. Secretary of Education from January 2009 through December 2015 as part of the Obama Administration. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Duncan served as chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools. From 2001 to 2008, Duncan won praise for uniting the city’s stakeholders behind an education agenda that included opening 100 new schools; expanding after-school, summer learning, early childhood, and college access programs; dramatically boosting the caliber of teachers; and building public-private partnerships around a variety of education initiatives.

He currently leads Chicago CRED, a nonprofit trying to achieve a transformative reduction in gun violence in Chicago. Through partnerships with local business leaders, community organizers, and nonprofit groups, Duncan aims to provide outreach, therapeutic, education, and employment opportunities for the young men most likely to be engaged in gun violence. He is also the managing partner at Emerson Collective, an organization dedicated to removing barriers so people can live to their full potential. Secretary Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology. At Harvard he served as co-captain of the basketball team and was named a first team Academic All-American.

Duncan serves on the boards of: Ariel Capital Management, Aspen Institute, Communities in Schools, Lucas Museum, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, National Association of Basketball Coaches, Ring Central and Thrive-Chicago. He also serves as Co-chair of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

Louise Rogers

Louise Rogers

Chair, NED, Investor and Industrialist London, UK

Louise is an experienced digital, business and board leader with a 25-year track record in Private Equity-backed, Corporate, and Venture Capital businesses both in Europe and the US.  She has extensive PE board experience with Exponent, Tenzing Charterhouse , Oakley Capital, TPG and Montagu . Louise has a significant reputation for working with senior leaders who are translating complex digital-change problems into transformational operational plans. She is known for strong strategic Board leadership and effective management support, resulting in significant revenue, product and profit growth, plus exit multiple enhancement.

Louise is driven by a highly customer-focused approach – with emphasis on establishing strong cultural drivers within an organisation to help achieve significant global growth. She has experience across multiple industries, but mainly focuses on Education (B2B, B2C, Higher Education, K12, Workplace learning), Digital Classified and Media. She has extensive experience of different Private Equity/Venture Capital requirements, having successfully worked for very different PE and VC houses – leading M&A, strategic review, competitive analysis, restructuring and full-process exits, plus raising funds through all rounds plus financial restructure, senior leveraged finance and public bonds.

David Blake

David Blake

Founder & Executive Chairman, Degreed

David Blake is the founder and executive chairman at Degreed. Degreed’s mission is to “jailbreak the degree” by helping people and companies answer for all learning and skills, not just formal education. Degreed helps individuals track all of their academic, professional, and informal learning, and then uses that information to match each learner with the best learning resources in the world: courses, trainings, professional certificates, conferences, articles, etc. Degreed helps organizations see the skills and learning of their employees, teams, & company, helping employees and managers set goals, track their learning, and certify the skills gained.

Prior to founding Degreed, David worked as a consultant at New Charter University, A competency-based university, mission-driven to provide affordable access to higher education, and also as a management consulting at Oliver Wyman.

David is not new to the world of startups and investing, having been part of the founding team at Zinch, acquired by Chegg. Zinch sought to connect students with opportunities by showcasing them as “more than test scores.” David has experience working in the EdTech Entrepreneurs Lab, part of the NewSchools Venture Fund, seeking to address the education achievement gap between students from low and high-income communities.

Harriet Seitler

Harriet Seitler

Chief Brand Officer, Course Hero Chicago, IL

Harriet Seitler is Chief Brand Officer at Course Hero, where she oversees communications, brand and growth marketing, and educator partnerships and has built brand programs from Student Hero Scholarships to the Dear Class of 2020 Michelle Obama virtual graduation partnership.

Harriet’s career spans 25 years as Executive VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Harpo Studios and then OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. An Emmy award winning brand leader, Seitler wrote the iconic “Live Your Best Life” tagline. Harriet oversaw some of the most historic programs in “Oprah” history, including the ChristmasKindess South Africa tour and the finale season’s Ultimate Viewer Australian Adventure. She led Oprah.com, podcasts, e-coursework, and live events.

Prior to Oprah, Harriet was VP of marketing at ESPN and senior vice president at MTV.

She serves as a Board member of Leap Innovations, a personalized learning and opportunity platform; Whalar Inc., a creator marketing company, and is a partner in Bistro LLC, a seed investor boutique.

Michael Sorrell

Michael Sorrell

President, Paul Quinn College

Dr. Michael J. Sorrell is President of Paul Quinn College. During his 13 years of leadership, Paul Quinn has become a national movement for its efforts to remake higher education in order to serve the needs of under-resourced students and communities.

Michael received his J.D. and M.A. in Public Policy from Duke University and his Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (where his dissertation defense was awarded “with Distinction”). While in law school, he was one of the founding members of the Journal of Gender Law & Policy and served as the Vice President of the Duke Bar Association. Michael was a recipient of a Sloan Foundation Graduate Fellowship, which funded his studies at both Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (as a graduate fellow) and Duke University. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in Government, served as Secretary-Treasurer of his senior class, was a two-time captain of the men’s varsity basketball team, and graduated as the school’s fifth all-time leading scorer.

Among the entities that President Sorrell serves as a trustee or director for are Duke University’s School of Law, the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, JP Morgan Chase’s Advancing Black Pathways, Amegy Bank, the Hockaday School, the Dallas Advisory Board of Teach for America, the Dallas Foundation, and EarthX.

Michael is a member of the Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity and a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Mike Smith

Mike Smith

Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University Boston, MA

Mike Smith is the past Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and is currently a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor. Mike joined Harvard’s Computer Science department in 1992, and served as FAS Dean from 2007 through late 2018. During his tenure, he recruited the most diverse group of world-class faculty in FAS history, and created the Dean’s Faculty Resources Committee in 2016 to support these strategic efforts. He was actively involved in Harvard and MIT’s launch of edX, and he served on its board from 2012-2018. In addition, Mike implemented a tenure track process, and established the Dean’s competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship, seeking to assist professors doing experimental and forward-leaning work.

Mike holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, along with a B.A. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from WPI.

Sergey Karayev

Sergey Karayev

Partner and Co-Founder of Volition

Sergey Karayev builds AI-powered software as Co-Founder of Volition, a new product studio.

Sergey previously co-founded Gradescope, which enabled instructors to grade paper-based exams, online homework, and programming projects on one platform, with AI assistance. Gradescope was acquired by Turnitin, where Sergey led development of AI for STEM.

Sergey has organized several popular courses taught online and at top universities such as UC Berkeley. These include Full Stack Deep Learning, which helps people go from a promising ML experiment to a shipped product, and Research to Startup, which helps CS PhD students explore the startup path.

Sergey holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley where he worked on deep learning for object recognition. He is originally from Russia and currently lives in Seattle.

Rick Levin

Rick Levin

CEO, Coursera; previously President, Yale University

Rick Levin is an internet executive, academic leader, and board level advisor with over 40 years of experience. He served as CEO of until June 2017, and he remains a Senior Adviser.  Previous, Rick was President of Yale University for a twenty-year term. He led the rebuilding and expansion of the Yale campus, redeveloped downtown New Haven, created scores of new international programs, and launched Yale’s early efforts in online education. Before taking over as President, he was a professor of economics.

Rick serves on a variety of public service, corporate, advisory and non-profit boards. He also served on President George Bush’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology, and he co-founded the World Economic Forum’s Global University Leaders Forum.  Ten members of his team at Yale went on to college or university presidencies.

Rick has deep experience in board management, governance, leadership development, general management, fundraising, and international relations.  His research in economics focused on industrial research and development, intellectual property, regulation, and antitrust.

Jessie Woolley-Wilson

Jessie Woolley-Wilson

President and CEO of DreamBox Learning

Jessie Woolley-Wilson is President and CEO of DreamBox Learning®. Prior to joining DreamBox, Jessie held executive positions at multiple leading EdTech companies, including Blackboard, LeapFrog, and Kaplan.

Jessie is a two-time recipient of EdTech Digest’s “EdTech Leadership Award” for her work in transformative innovation in education, and she has been named a “Top 100 Influencers in EdTech.” Forbes placed her on its “Impact 15” list for being a disruptor in education, and The New York Times featured Jessie in its Corner Office column.

Regionally, Jessie has received many accolades, including Seattle Business Magazine’s Executive Excellence Award in the “CEO of the Year” category, GeekWire’s “Big Tech CEO of the Year” award, Puget Sound Business Journal’s “Women of Influence” and “Innovator of the Year” awards, and the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur Of The Year®” award in the Pacific Northwest region.

She has served on several boards, including Quizlet, Rosetta Stone, and the Western Governors University Board of Trustees. She has been a featured speaker at many events, including TEDx Rainier, SXSWedu, DENT, GeekWire Summit, and the ASU GSV Summit.

Jessie holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Virginia.

Jessica Lindl

Jessica Lindl

Global Head of Education, Unity Technologies

Jessica is the Global Head of Education at Unity Technologies. Jessica has a strong marketing and product management background from her time at Riverdeep, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and at Scientific Learning.

Jessica gained executive experience as the CEO of GlassLab, Inc., an online portal for educational games, followed by her tenure as COO of LRNG by Collective Shift, which seeks to redesign learning for the connected age so that all youth have an opportunity to succeed. Jessica joined Unity in May 2017 where she works on the cutting edge of technology and gaming development for their learning and education business.

In addition to sitting on the GSV Strategic Advisory Board, Jessica is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow and is an advisory board member for California State University.

Scott Kinney

Scott Kinney

Managing Director in Education Technology, Devonshire Investors

Scott Kinney is the Managing Director in Education Technology at Devonshire Investors where their investment ideology is to invest in technology businesses that are committed to making our education system more effective, more accessible, and more affordable. Scott is passionate about leading and supporting innovation in education at all levels with the primary objective of helping more individuals achieve their educational and career goals as efficiently and affordably as possible.

While president of Capella University, Scott led efforts to develop new and innovative ways of offering high quality higher education that better serve both students and employers. Prior to joining Capella, Scott served as president of West Education Group at Thomson Reuters Corporation, where he led a group of five businesses providing legal education products and services to academic and legal professional customers around the world. Scott’s experience lies across a variety of industries, with an emphasis on technology and information-driven businesses.

Stefan Von Holtzbrink

Stefan Von Holtzbrink

Co-Owner, Chairman and CEO, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group Stuttgart, Germany

Stefan von Holtzbrinck is CEO of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 2001 and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Springer Nature since 2015. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group is a family-owned German holding company with broad interests in research communication (Springer Nature), educational course systems (Macmillan Learning), consumer books (Macmillan Publishers) and technology start-ups (Digital Science, HV Capital). It has ownership and stakes in over 300 Internet companies and funds around the world like Insight Partners, GSV Acceleration, Smash Capital, Founders Factory Europe, 468 Capital, Frontiers, BtoV, Dimensions, Symplectic, ifi Claims, figshare, labguru, Smash, Altmetric, AMBOSS et al. The group also runs such companies as Scientific American, St. Martin’s Press, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Picador, S. Fischer Verlage, Rowohlt Verlag and Die ZEIT.

Von Holtzbrinck studied Law and German Literature and received a PhD in Media Law from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He held positions at Bloomsbury, Kirch Media Group and the New Media division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. He was Managing Director of Nature Publishing Group and Director of Macmillan.

In addition, von Holtzbrinck is member of the Max Planck Society, Chairman of the Max Planck Foundation, Vice Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, Vice Chairman of the Business and Industry Advisory Board of the Goethe Institute as well as Chairman of the Stuttgart Children’s Foundation.

Adam Freed

Adam Freed

Managing Partner New York, NY

Adam Freed is a Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, an education- and workforce-focused venture firm investing in transformative learning companies across the Pre-K to Gray spectrum.

Adam has spent much of his career building businesses and leading teams in high growth companies.  He is current board chair and former CEO of Teachers Pay Teachers. TpT is the go-to site for educator-created materials. Adam helped grow the company to its current annual reach of more than 75% of all K-12 teachers in the US, Canada, and Australia.

Prior to TpT, Adam served as COO of artisanal goods purveyor Etsy. Adam also led International Product Management and International Sales Operations at Google — before, during, and after the company’s IPO.

Before joining the education and technology worlds, Adam was a TV reporter and anchor in both English and Japanese. He is the recipient of both a Knight Fellowship and a local TV Emmy for his work.

Adam loves helping other leaders develop and thrive.  He has a certificate in executive coaching from Columbia Teacher’s College and is a Pahara Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He got his undergraduate degree at Harvard in Linguistics and his master’s degree from Yale Law School.

A Brooklynite for the past decade, Adam serves on the board of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and lives in the creative borough with his husband, Ken, their two children, and their dog, Kiki. Adam also speaks 11 languages, including Spanish, Finnish, Turkish, and Japanese. He has lived in 11 locales in five countries around the world.

Adam is on Twitter as @adamfreed or Instagram as @freedagram.  You can also email him via www.adamjfreed.com.

Phyllis Lockett

Phyllis Lockett

Founder & CEO, LEAP Innovations

Phyllis Lockett is a serial social entrepreneur who has led transformation efforts in education, government and the civic arena. Ms. Lockett is currently the founder and CEO of LEAP Innovations, an organization headquartered in Chicago that works with schools to catalyze and ignite education innovation and prepare students for the changing world of work. As the president and CEO of New Schools for Chicago, she helped raise more than $70 million to support opening 80 new public schools. Ms. Lockett serves on the Board of Directors for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), CME Group and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. She is a Henry Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. Recently, Phyllis was named a contributor to Forbes, where she writes about education innovation and the future of learning.

Private: Jaime Casap

Private: Jaime Casap

Education Evangelist at Google Phoenix, AZ

Jaime Casap is the Education Evangelist at Google. Jaime evangelizes the power and potential of technology and the web as enabling and supporting tools in pursuit of promoting inquiry-driven learning models. Jaime collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation and iteration into our education policies and practices. He speaks on education, technology, innovation, and generation z, at events around the world.

In addition to his role at Google, Jaime is also an author and serves on a number of boards for organizations focused on education, innovation, and equity. Jaime teaches a 10th-grade communication class at the Phoenix Coding Academy in Phoenix and is an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, where he teaches classes on policy, innovation, and leadership.

Elijah Mayfield

Elijah Mayfield

Entrepreneur in Residence, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science; previously CEO, LightSide Labs Pittsburgh, PA

Elijah Mayfield completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon in Language Technologies, where he serves as the Entrepreneur in Residence to the school of computer science. Prior to returning to Carnegie Mellon, Elijah launched and served as CEO of LightSide Labs, a divergence from his Ph.D. research in natural language processing and machine learning. The startup received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before being acquired by Turnitin in October 2014. Elijah joined Turnitin as the Vice President of New Technologies, where he spearheaded the release of Revision Assistant, a machine-learning based edtech product.

Elijah has spent time as a policy consultant for both the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and joined the GSV Strategic Advisory Board in September 2018.