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She Snoops for Scoops: The Personal Side of the EdNET Community

Vicki Smith Bigham —Friday, September 05, 2008

Happy Friday, everyone! Good grief – here it is Friday, and I realized I had not yet written my column this week, so there was a real adrenaline rush early this morning. But here are the scoops for you, right on schedule….

I wrote last week of all of the instances of Shakespeare Squared being in the news but provided you with the wrong e-mail address for President and CEO Kim Kleeman – sorry about that! You can drop a note of congratulations to Kim and her team at kimkleeman@shakespearesquared.com.

I also reported last week on some of our friends who were in Denver for the Democratic convention. I had a note from two others there…Jeanne Hayes, President, The Hayes Connection, and Sally DeVincentis, CEO of Apte, Inc. Look for them both at EdNET in another week or drop them a note now at jhayes@hayesconnection.com and sally@apte.com. Were any of you at the Republican convention this week?

Dale Mann, PhD, Managing Director of Interactive, Inc. has, after forty years, abandoned New York for Virginia where he and his wife Charol Shakeshaft bought a horse farm north of Richmond. He has moved the company to Ashland, Virginia, and Charol is running the ed leadership program for Virginia Commonwealth University. It sounds like a great move to me! Say hello and wish Dale all the best in his new home at INTERINC@aol.com. He asks that you also send instructions about horses!

Curriculum Associates has named Robert Waldron as its new President and also appointed him to the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer. He succeeds company founder, former President and owner Frank Ferguson who, now in his 80’s, has assumed the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Rob brings to the company more than 16 years of experience in leadership and improving organizational systems and structure. In his new position, he takes over responsibility for all aspects of Curriculum Associates day-to-day business operations, including profit and loss and sales and marketing. He comes to Curriculum Associates from Berkshire Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm, where he served as operating executive in their portfolio support group. Among other duties, he most recently served as the interim President and COO of Waterworks, a 37-store $130 million luxury home brand. Before that, from 2002 to 2006, Rob was the CEO of Boston-based Jumpstart, a national non-profit organization that prepares pre-school children from low-income backgrounds for kindergarten. Under his leadership, the cost per participant was reduced by more than 30 percent while the number of children served more than tripled. He also raised $40 million from corporate, private, foundation and government sources and developed multi-million dollar CEO-level national partnerships with Pearson, American Eagle Outfitters and Starbucks. In addition, he co-led an effort to save AmeriCorps that resulted in a $190 million increase in federal funding for service programs across the country. 

While at Jumpstart, Rob received several honors, such as being named "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum and receiving the Fast Company Magazine/Monitor Group Social Capitalist Award for three consecutive years. In 2005, Jumpstart received the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy's Directors Award for its collaboration with corporations. In 2004, the Boston Business Journal named Rob as one of 40 leaders under the age of 40 to reach the pinnacle of both professional success and community involvement in Boston. That same year, Jumpstart also received recognition from President George W. Bush, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and many other government leaders. Before Jumpstart, Rob served as CEO of Score Learning (a unit of Kaplan Education), which grew from $2 million to more than $50 million in revenue under his leadership, becoming the second largest tutoring company in the United States.  He also served as Northeast regional director and then vice president of Kaplan. He started his career at Morgan Stanley as a financial analyst in 1987, becoming an associate one year later. Please join me in congratulating Rob on his new role at rwaldron@cainc.com.

Jigsaw Learning has appointed Glenn Chapin as the company’s Vice President of Sales. He will help this new startup company bring its technology-based solutions that are targeted for students with special education needs, specifically those with autism and speech language classifications, to the K-12 marketplace. Jigsaw Learning is being formed through the merger of two companies; TeachTown Learning and Animated Speech. Glenn has nearly 30 years of experience in sales and executive sales management with leading educational software solution providers who implement technology-based curriculum and management systems that enhance teaching and student learning Most recently he was VP of K-12 Sales for Scientific Learning and held a number positions of increasing responsibility with Compass Learning and National Computer Systems. Please join me in congratulating Glenn on his new role. You can send congratulations to Glenn at glenn@jigsawlearning.com

John Katzman, who shortly after graduating from Princeton University founded Princeton Review Inc, is leaving the company to start a new business. He is stepping down as Chairman to start 2tor Inc, whose initial program involves online higher education, but not test preparation. John founded Princeton Review in 1981 and was Chief Executive until July 2007. His departure will coincide with the end of a six-month sabbatical on September 5th. Under his leadership, the Princeton Review has grown into one of the strongest brands in education. In 2008, the company will help over 50% of the students applying to U.S. colleges and universities find, get into and pay for school. John’s innovative ideas on educational reform have made him one of the nation’s leading authorities on testing, post-secondary admissions and data-differentiated instruction. He is the co-author of five books on testing and admissions and a frequent lecturer and panelist. He has helped launch several companies, though 2tor is only the second he has personally run. He will remain a director for Princeton Review. David Lowenstein, a Princeton Review Director, will become Chairman. The New York-based company's Chief Executive is Michael Perik.

Recorded Books, a Haights Cross Communications company, has announced the promotion of Troy Juliar to Vice President, Content and Acquisitions. In this position, he will direct all acquisition activities across Recorded Books’ library, school and trade channels. Previously, Troy was Content Director and Children’s Publisher for Recorded Books. During his tenure in that position he published 120 audio titles per year, including multiple Newbery Prize winners, New York Times best-sellers, and last year’s National Book Award Winner, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Prior to joining Recorded Books, he held senior positions with Rodale Press and HighBridge Audio. Join me in congratulating Troy on his new position! 

Jesse Soleil has an expanded role at Scholastic Inc. as VP, Emerging Media and Technology. He has a wide array of skills and experience in technology design and implementation, including multi-platform games, educational software, and project management of technical staff and process. He will continue to report to Dick Robinson, President, Chairman and CEO, in this expanded role. The primary goal of Jesse’s new assignment is to assist Dick in ensuring that Scholastic is working effectively across the company to manage technology and media that affect multiple businesses. In his recent assignments Jesse has already accomplished a great deal to carry out this goal. His expanded role requires a combination of creative and technical skills as well as experience with Scholastic’s various products and divisions. Jesse’s extensive experience qualifies him to handle this cross-divisional, cross-platform role. As Director of the Lab for Informal Learning, he has moved ahead on a number of initiatives including working on IDEO and other outside developers and organizations. He has also worked with internal groups on the consumer learning initiative, development and prototyping of a new Scholastic massively multiplayer game and transmedia property, Scholastic’s first Facebook application, and other forward-facing initiatives. 

After working as an independent contractor for the company, Jesse joined Scholastic in 2002 in the Ed group where he helped develop ReadAbout and ZipZoom and the new WiggleWorks. He also launched ReadAbout as General Manager and Director of Adapative Reading Technology. He started and managed the Scholastic Education Technology Project Management Office, which tracked and reported on project status, established standards and tools to manage projects, developed a resource pool of people to work on the technology and development phases and initiated vendor guidelines. He also led the instructional technology design processes used to develop Expert Space. Since 1986 Jesse has been involved in computers and web development – beginning with his role as the owner of a startup Web development company and continuing through this work at Nortel Networks as a Senior Manager, Information Services and Portfolio Program Manager at Computer Sciences Corporation. He led a business transformation project at JP Morgan Chase that delivered application architecture, high-level data models and transformation plans for the project. He is a seasoned project manager, technical producer and web developer and has a collaborative approach to his work. He is also a game designer and is closely tuned in to the way kids interact with media and technology today. Most impressive! Join me, please in congratulating Jesse on his expanded role at Scholastic.

The talented Paul Kuhne, currently with BrainPOP, has accepted a role heading up eChalk’s marketing work and will start there on September 22nd. He is taking a little time off for getting married in-between! We will miss him at EdNET, but he and fiancé Brooke will be married on the 13th. Busy days for Paul! He reports he has really enjoyed his time at BrainPOP and is enthused now about joining the eChalk team. I can report later on his new e-mail there, and you can send him a note of congratulations on all of his happy news now at paulkuhne@gmail.com.

 

Bernice Stafford, Principal Consultant for the Center for Interactive Learning & Collaboration (CILC) is home following her recent knee replacement surgery. Some complications not directly related to the surgery and a few actual scares kept her away from home much, much longer than she ever would have imagined. But she returned home on August 1st and has been on a rigorous schedule with her physical therapist. The good news is that she has made excellent progress. And we will see her in Boston for EdNET, which is also good news! Look for her then or drop her a note now to say you wish were continued health and progress at Bernice.stafford@roadrunner.com. She has so appreciated all of your thoughts, prayers and good wishes over the last couple of months.

I’m so sad to have to report that our friend Ileana Rowe’s father passed away this week in Costa Rica. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer and had been undergoing chemo treatments but had to stop that and move to hospice care in his final days. It is heartbreaking to lose someone you love, and Ileana was very close to and dearly loved her father. She has felt fortunate, though, to be with her family in Costa Rica in recent months and to have quality time with her father. She sent me a beautiful picture of the two of them together. Their arms were around one another, and Ileana was all smiles – she said her father was always able to make her laugh. She will remain in Costa Rica till the end of the month and then return to the states and full gear work with her consulting in early October. Let Ileana know we are all thinking of her and keeping her and her family in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time at iqr2@comcast.net.

As I end the column this week, let’s take another look at who’s coming to EdNET! This week, I searched the online password-protected directory of attendees to identify those organizations that indicated they will be networking at the conference to FORM NEW STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS – I mean, after all, that is what EdNET is all about! Here is what I found:

360KID

7th Wave Consulting

Academic Business Advisors, LLC

Adaptive Curriculum

American Education Corporation

American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC)

Apangea Learning, Inc.

Apple, Inc.

APTE, Inc.

Arc Capital Development

Arizona State University

Atomic Learning

AutoSkill International

Avant Assessment

Baseline Development Group

Bernstein Strategy Group

Betterlesson

Bigham Technology Solutions, Inc.

Bill Smith Group LLC

Blackboard Inc.

BLEgroup 

BlueNose Edutainment

Brainchild

BrainPOP

Bridgepoint Marketing Services

Brown Publishing Network

BSG Team Ventures/Boston Search Group, Inc.

C. Blohm & Associates, Inc.

Casabonne Associates Inc

CDI America, Inc.

Cimple Systems, Inc.

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Consortium for School Networking (CoSN)

Cramster.com

Crayola, LLC

Creative Learning Systems

Creative Teaching Press

Cuesta Technologies

Curriculum Advantage

Davis Publications, Inc.

Dell Computer Corporation

Discovery Education

eChalk

EdTech Design Associates

Education Industry Association, Inc.

Education Sales Management

Educational Systemics

eInstruction Corporation

Eiseman Levine/Jeffrey A. Fromm, Esq.

ENA 

Enablearning

ePals

eSpindle Learning

ETR Associates

Evans Newton Incorporated

Excelsior Software, Inc.

Faronics

FieldPROS, Inc.

Florida Virtual School

Focus Marketing, Inc.

Follett Corporation

Generation YES

Georgia Department of Education

Hotmath, Inc.

Huntington Learning Center

Inquire Learning 

Instructional Resources Corporation

Integre Technical Publishing Co

Interactive Educational Systems Design, Inc

International Society for Technology in Education 

iRi, Inc.

Jack Farrell & Associates

Jon Bower

Key Curriculum Press

Knowledge Delivery Systems

Knowledge Factor

Lanierthinking, Inc./Vespo Assoc.

Learn Without Limits

LearningDesigns

Learningstation.com

Lexia Learning Systems

LTGO

Makit Products 

Maps.com

MarketingWorks

MDR

Meeker and Associates

MemeSpark LLC

MESA

MindShare Learning

MRI Network Saint Charles

MTD Marketing

National School Board Association (NSBA)

NEA Member Benefits

Northern Kentucky University

Northwest Evaluation Association

Palo Alto (CA) High School

PASCO Scientific

Pegeen Wright Associates

Peoples Education, Inc.

Peter Li Education

Promethean Inc.

Pronk&Associates

Provenio Group, Inc.

Quality Education Data

Quarasan

Rappaport Consulting

RealityWorks

RedRock Reports

Revolution Learning

RM Educational Software

Rust Associates

Saywire.com

Scholastic Professional Media

Scholastic, Inc.

SchoolWorks

SEG Assessment | SEG Research

SIFA

SMART Technologies 

Software & Information Industry Association

Spectrum K12 School Solutions, Inc.

Straight Line Editorial Development

SynapticMash, LLC

Tata Interactive

Teaching Strategies, Inc.

Teachscape

TERC

Test Prep Systems

Texas Instruments

Texthelp Systems

The Association of Educational Publishers

The Greaves Group, LLC

The Heller Reports, a QED Company

The Teich Group, Inc.

The van Tulleken Company, a subsidiary of Quayle Munroe 

Thinkronize

TrueNorthLogic

TutorVista.com

US Netcom 

Vespo Associates, Inc.

VHS, Inc.

Victory Productions

VIP Tone, Inc. 

Vista Higher Learning

VPG Integrated Media

Weiss & Associates, Executive Recruiting

WGBH Boston / Interactive

WGBH Boston/ Teachers' Domain

Wireless Generation

Wolfram Research Inc

World Book, Inc.

It is not too late to register – just go to www.qeddata.com/Conference/EdNet/YrCurrent/Register.aspx by September 11th so we can see you there! After September 11th, you can still register onsite. Numbers are high and growing daily – the program is awesome – and you know the networking is unsurpassed. I look forward to seeing you there! Have a safe and restful weekend, friends, and enjoy the precious time you have with family and friends - Vicki, the Snoop