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Heather Shen is the CPO and co-founder of Praxis Labs. As graduate students at Stanford, Shen and classmate Elise Smith, 30, bonded over their mutual interest in helping companies and institutions do a better job at diversity and inclusion training. They came up with the idea for Praxis Labs, a startup that can deliver diversity training using either VR headsets, mobile phones, laptops or desktops. Heather is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Education. Heather has also worked as a management consultant, an electrical engineer for Microsoft’s Hololens, and in Crew Systems at NASA. Heather holds a Master’s of Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Mekayla Castro is the Head of Curriculum at Praxis Labs, where she drives curriculum and content development and partners with the product team to create immersive experiences and impactful learning tools and pathways. Mekayla was formerly a Senior Behavioral Scientist and Head of Learning Experience Design at Edtech Unicorn BetterUp, which provides coaching services to enterprise clients, and was the Director of Global Leadership and Learning at American Express. Mekayla earned her Ph.D in Social-Organizational Psychology from Teachers College Columbia University.

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Cherian Thomas is a senior vice president at BYJU’S who led the company’s acquisition of Osmo from BYJU’S and the company’s entry to the North American market—as its first international employee. A computer scientist by training and a self-proclaimed nerd through his college years and beyond, Cherian began his career as an engineer and quickly found his passion in the world of startups, including the gaming company Zynga. 

Prior to BYJU’S, Cherian founded his own startup, Cucumbertown—a network for chefs—that was acquired by Cookpad in 2017. Cherian leads business for some of BYJU’S key initiatives and is responsible for several hundred million in revenue per year that spans across 15+ countries. Currently, Cherian’s focus remains on Osmo from BYJU’S which builds a universe of hands-on gamified learning experiences validated by education experts to nourish the minds of children.

Recommended Resources:
TED, TEDx
Watch me play ... the audience! by Bobby McFerrin
EdSurge
Youtube

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Dr. Yair Shapira is the founder and CEO of Amplio. Following two decades as an executive in successful start ups, he founded Amplio to help the millions of children with special needs maximize their potential, starting with his son, who stutters. His previous roles include executive positions in sales, marketing, business development and R&D. Dr. Shapira holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and speech processing from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Luann L. Purcell, Ed.D. was the Executive Director of the international Council of Administrators of Special Education, Inc (CASE), a division of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) for 18 years. Dr. Purcell has 48 years of educational experience, as a general education teacher at both high school and middle school level, teacher of students with emotional and behavioral disorders, and assistant superintendent for pupil services for 18 years in a school district with 27,000 students.

Judy Rich, EdD, CCC-SLP, is currently a speech-language pathologist (SLP) as well as an education consultant and lecturer at The University of Texas. She worked in public schools for 35 years as a campus SLP, program specialist for speech and language services, special education director, executive director, and assistant superintendent for student services.

Angelica Morgan was most recently a Senior Curriculum Engineer at 2U and a research intern at CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology working on the Center on Inclusive Technology in Education Systems (CITES) project. She will received her Ph.D in learning design and technology from North Carolina State University in December with a research focus on the use of technology for special education students.

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Kate Eberle Walker is an education industry leader, author, and working mom with more than 20 years of experience managing, advising, acquiring, and investing in high-profile education companies. Currently, Kate is the CEO of Presence, the leading provider of teletherapy services for children with diverse needs. 

 Previously, Kate was CEO of The Princeton Review and Tutor.com, and she managed strategy and investments for Kaplan, Inc. She has served on several education-focused boards, including Babbel, Barnes and Noble Education, Prospect Schools in Brooklyn, NY, and Testing Mom. Kate is a contributor at Fast Company and Forbes, and she is the author of The Good Boss: 9 Ways Every Manager Can Support Women at Work.

Recommended Resource:

• Good Talk by Mira Jacob

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This Week, we cover:

1. McKinsey Reports on Edtech

• Five Trends to Watch in the Edtech Industry 

2. Owl Ventures

•  Owl Outcomes Report

3. Online Tutoring

• Schools across the U.S. have turned to Paper’s online tutoring. Some worry it’s falling short

4. Mental Health Hiring Crisis in Schools:

• Schools struggle to staff up for youth mental health crisis | AP News
• Schools struggle to hire more mental health professionals for students | PBS NewsHour

5. Edx + Emeritus

• edX Teams Up with Emeritus to Fuel International Expansion
• 2U Learning Platform edX Partners With Emeritus for Overseas Expansion | MarketScreener

6. Law Schools Ditch the US News and World Report

• Why Six Top-Ranked Law Schools Left U.S. News in the Dust This Week
• Yale Law School’s Revolt of the Elites | The New Republic
• Opinion | Are the U.S. News College Rankings Finally Going to Die? - The New York Times
• Law schools reject 'U.S. News' rankings

7. Test-Optional Movement Grows

• Test-Optional Momentum Grows As ABA Panel Votes To No Longer Require Law Schools To Use LSAT
• Over 1,830 colleges are test-optional for fall 2023 admissions | Higher Ed Dive
• What Does an SAT Score Mean in a Test-Optional World? 

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Younes Mourri is the CEO and Founder of Livetech.ai, a course platform that offers low-cost high quality instructor-led courses in high-demand technical subjects. Younes is the co-creator many of the most popular artificial intelligence MOOCs, including Andrew Ng’s Artifical Intelligence class and Deeplearning.ai’s Natural Language Processing specialization.

Younes holds a Master’s and Ph.D in Artificial Intelligence from MIT and a Master’s in Statistics from Stanford, where he has taught Deep Learning and Applied Machine Learning.

Resources:

The Batch (weekly newsletter) from Deeplearning.ai
Kian Katanforoosh, founder of Workera
Andrew Ng, Co-founder of Coursera and Deeplearning.ai

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Pablo Simko is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Coleap, a marketplace of expert-designed learning communities.

Previously, he was the Chief Operating Officer at Elenas, a startup which enables Latin American women to set up online stores from the comfort of their mobile phones and has onboarded 300,000+ entrepreneurs throughout the region, and a Chief of Staff at Polymath Ventures, a startup studio for emerging markets.

Resources:

Building the Intentional University by Stephen M. Kosslyn  (Editor, Contributor), Ben Nelson (Editor, Contributor), and others.

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On this Week in Edtech:

1) A16z on Edtech

• Andreessen Horowitz is 'betting heavily' on edtech 

2) Layoffs in Tech...

• Latest layoffs: Companies making cuts
• Thousands of tech workers were laid off last week

3) ...and Edtech

• Ed Tech - LayoffsTracker
• Coursera announces layoffs 
• Unacademy cuts 10% of jobs
• Brainly Fires Employees 

4) Indian Edtech is Messi

• BYJU'S unveils Lionel Messi as Global Brand Ambassador
• Will Offline Push Help Unacademy, BYJU’S & Co Beat Edtech Blues? 
• upGrad Earmarks $30 Million For Offline Expansion

5) Return on Investment for Traditional Education vs. "Upskilling" 

1. Emeritus Shows Upskilling Results in Pay Raises and Career Advancements
2. Gen Zers don’t see the point in getting a degree: how to fix the ROI of college (Aaron Rasmussen)
3. Three steps to assess ROI for higher education

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Evan Hill-Ries is Deputy General Counsel at Amplify, a next-generation curriculum and assessment company serving 10 million students in all 50 states. Responsible for supporting Amplify's K–8 digital curriculum product teams on content issues, development best practices, data privacy, and sales and marketing compliance, as well as company-wide work on corporate and strategic transactions, equity incentive plans, information security, accessibility, and HR policies. Evan has taught Copyright, Commerce, and Culture in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communications at NYU, and has counselled corporate clients on intellectual property, software development, equity financing at several corporate law firms.

Trevor Skene is the co-founder and CEO of Patent Hacks. Patent Hacks is a patent education company developed by 3 former USPTO patent examiners, who have designed an online educational platform (Learning Center) dedicated to making the patent process affordable for everyone. Trevor has also served as an entrepreneur and mentor at innovation labs in Pennsylvania, where Patent Hacks is located.

Recommended Resources:
Evan Hill-Ries:
Copyrights Highway by Paul Goldstein

Trevor Skene:
@patent_hacks on Twitter
IPWatchdog.com
US Intellectual Property Alliance (USIPA)