On this week's episode of Exit Stories, Ascend Goals Co-founder Christine Nicodemus joins our host Kevin Mosley.

Ascend was created in 2019 as a simple goal setting app for high school students, but quickly evolved into something much more. Together with Reg Gabriel, Christine built the company into a student empowerment software platform that helps schools and mentoring organizations cultivate, track, and measure their goals and achievements. She talks about seeking acquisition opportunities early on and being acquired by edtech partner, Aperture Education. In 2021, the combined companies struck a deal worth $18 million with the largest school district in the country, the New York City Department of Education, which proved to be a major win for them. Aperture was acquired by Riverside Insights in May 2022. Christine also discusses working with an investment bank to sell the company, which included managing the IOIs and LOIs.