On Balance

Kathleen Rogers is the President of EARTHDAY.ORG. Under her leadership, it has grown into a global year-round policy and activist organization. She has been the leading voice in developing campaigns and programs focused on diversifying the environmental movement, highlighted by Campaign for Communities and Billion Acts of Green.

Kathleen has held senior positions with the National Audubon Society, the Environmental Law Institute, and two U.S. Olympic Organizing Committees. She has also worked for Garth Associates in New York City and the Beveridge & Diamond law firm, where she developed a white-collar environmental crime defense practice. Kathleen was editor-in-chief of the University of California at Davis Law Review, and clerked for the Honorable John Pratt at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She also worked with the U.S. Delegation at the United Nations Conference on Women.

During her tenure as Chief Wildlife Counsel for the National Audubon Society, Kathleen directed several programs, including its international trade, migratory species, and biodiversity policy initiatives. While with National Audubon, Kathleen was Environmental Representative on the United States Delegation Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). She was also responsible for bringing the first citizen complaint before the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the tri-national agency formed to oversee North American environmental issues.

Kathleen Rogers has received numerous awards. She was named one of 2010’s top working mothers by Working Mother magazine. She has also been featured as Power Player of the Week on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Most recently, Kathleen was awarded the Luminary award by Womensphere and the Urban Zen Foundation, given to women who are inspirations in their fields. Kathleen is an official voting member of Greenpeace and a board member of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

Under Kathleen's leadership, Earth Day Network has developed a significant role in advancing the new green economy and has emerged as a dynamic year-round policy and activist organization. Earth Day Network now reaches into 192 countries, embraces new constituencies - including youth and people of color - and integrates civic participation into each of Earth Day Network’s programs and activities.

Before Ello, Tom Sayer was the head of impact and adoption programs at Google for Education, where his team was responsible for ensuring that Google tools were used effectively in classrooms worldwide. He is on the board of GO Public Schools, an organization dedicated to giving voice to families in the most underserved communities, and on the advisory board of Education Reimagined, the movement builder of learner-centered education.

Sayer also worked as an intelligence officer and a product manager founded an EdTech company (with Catalin) and built a mini-golf course in Cambodia. Tom graduated from Cambridge University with first-class honors in maths and psychology and has an MBA and MA (Education) from Stanford. He has won the Lamor prize at Cambridge, the Queen’s medal at Sandhurst, the Intelligence top student award, and was a Siebel Scholar at the GSB. He loves running and rugby and lives with his wife and two children outside New York City.‍

Favorite Children’s Book: Little Blue Truck

Victor Wang is the CEO of Stockpile, the leading online brokerage for kids and families. He is also the founder of The Stockpile Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing financial awareness, advancing knowledge of financial planning, and investing in marginalized communities and at-risk youth. Victor assumed the position of Stockpile CEO in 2019 and founded the Stockpile Foundation in 2021. He currently leads Stockpile's vision, direction, and growth to provide financial opportunity for those who are disenfranchised and disengaged from their financial future.

With more than 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, Victor has a proven track record of building and leading teams to a shared vision and has worked with numerous financial and consumer brands, including Wells Fargo Bank, American Express, Nike, LEGO, Indian Motorcycle, and Jamba Juice. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business marketing from the University of Southern California.

Dov Friedman has been selling EdTech for over a decade. Friedman joins Dr. Berger to discuss the role culture plays in understanding the impact on the development of young people across the world. Friedman is incredibly refreshing and transparent with his entrepreneurial journey.

During his University years in NY, Friedman worked weekends with special ed children planning programs, which made him want to go from the business world to being a teacher. After teaching for several years after college, he decided to move to Israel, which, being a start-up nation, led him to combine his love of the classroom and education with his business skills and start a company in the education and web conferencing integration space. 

During that time, Dov's product was able to enable millions of teachers and students globally, especially during the pandemic, to easily and seamlessly manage their web conferencing from the LMS, which helped ease the online learning process for them. 

(fun fact- our product was one of the first partners with Zoom, and we used to talk to Eric directly when Zoom had less than 30 employees)

After almost 10 years, last year, he decided to move on to Sibme as their VP of partnerships and sales. 

At Sibme our software enables remote professional development, based on video and AI evidence to improve teaching and coaching skills. 

Our platform enables districts of all sizes to scale their coaching, not only via our AI based software, but also by utilizing our platform with our virtual coaching services. 

Sibme has 100'000's of  users, 100's of customers and is in school districts of all sizes across the country. 

Dov lives in Israel, with his wife Dr. Abby Kra-Friedman, who is a certified nurse midwife, and head of undergraduate women's health nursing- at the Henrietta Szold Hadassah School of Nursing at the faculty of medicine at Hebrew University, and his 6 children. 

Dov loves seeing and touring the country, traveling for pleasure and work, coaching and playing baseball, as well as anything that has to do with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  

Dr. Rod Berger is joined by Kevin Jenkins, Director of Enterprise Growth & Investments at Strategos Group, to discuss work in the financial services sector and the role education has played in his decision to pivot from a classic engineering career to one of a more fluid and entrepreneurial path.

Quincy Kadin is a high school student in Los Angeles. After feeling the effects of anxiety during her childhood, she spurred this courageous trailblazer to author a book for all ages. Frankies Fishy Feelings is a fantastically grounded book helping kids and parents navigate emotional obstacles.

Teodora Pavkovic is the Director of Wellbeing at Linewize, where she leverages her decade-plus of experience as a parenting coach and digital wellness practitioner to provide guidance and advice to parents, teachers, and school administrators on topics concerning mental health, responsible and safe use of technology, tech ethics, parenting in the digital age and child development. A prominent figure in the global digital wellness community, Pavkovic is a member of both the American and British psychological associations, co-chair of Fairplay’s (formerly Campaign For a Commercial-Free Childhood) parenting professionals’ group, and an advisory board member of several educational and mental health organizations. She has dedicated herself to helping people preserve and protect their well-being and relationships in this increasingly digital world, teaching them to use technology mindfully, intentionally, and humanely.

Pavkovic has her master’s in clinical psychology and has trained in both psychotherapy and coaching. She has lived in nine different countries and is a sought-after public speaker, thought leader, and media expert who has spoken at conferences like TEDx in Singapore, Human After All in New York City, and HUMANITECH, the first virtual digital wellness conference that she both organized and moderated.

On Balance with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Chief Academic Officer Francie Alexander. Dr. Rod Berger and Francie discuss her life's work throughout education and current trends impacting policy and practice.

HMH recently released its Educator Confidence Report which showed teachers rated their confidence in the profession at a 42 out of 100 (slightly up from its lowest point in 2022). Part two of the report showed that teachers’ basic needs remain unmet, and they’re looking for more well-being support to get them through the school year.

Francie’s background is grounded in the classroom, as she taught students from kindergarten all the way through college. Her experience in the classroom, along with her current role at HMH, gives her a unique perspective on the state of teacher burnout.

Dr. Jody LeVos

As Chief Learning Officer at Begin, Jody is responsible for leading HOMER’s team of learning design experts to craft an innovative, playful learning curriculum and provide data-driven insights for parents. With over a decade of experience in the children’s media and early learning space, Jody has overseen the development of countless award-winning, play-to-learn products and experiences... She has worked with some of the world’s best-known ed-tech, children’s media, and toy companies, including roles at LeapFrog, VTech, KidKraft, and Mattel, where she has continually advocated the importance of learning through play.

About Begin

• Begin is a platform of hands-on and digital products for families and children ages 2-10.
• Begin is the only early learning solution that addresses all core skills that will prepare young kids to succeed and provides guidance to parents along the way.
• Begin champions kids as individuals first, supporting them as they discover their passions, build new skills, and deepen their love of learning.
• Begin also empowers parents to nurture crucial skills during key developmental stages and acts as a partner to parents every step of the way.

Begin's work Sesame Workshop

• Sesame and Begin developed research-backed digital resources designed to sit at the intersection of the skills children need to thrive and the skills that parents care most about.
• This expansion marks the second of three phases of the partnership, adding to Learn with Sesame Street’s robust suite of developmentally appropriate content for children 2+ years of age.
• This expansion deepens young children’s learning experiences by focusing on social skills like friendship and social problem-solving, emotional literacy, and emotion skills such as identifying, naming, and managing big feelings.
• The program offering is unique in that it serves the whole family through content and tools for children, parents, and other family members and caregivers –– providing each with personalized support to navigate social and emotional development in this critical stage of children's lives.
• The app update includes:
• 30 ad-free interactive videos, stories, games, and songs for children that feature beloved Sesame characters. Elmo and Abby dive into topics like identifying emotions, managing, and regulating feelings and navigating social spaces.
• Begin’s Grown-Up Guide provides child calming strategies, tactics to help children understand empathy and tools to encourage self-expression.

Nick Dazé is the co-founder and CEO of Heirloom, which builds no-code tools allowing schools and employers to tokenize credentials on the blockchain. Before co-founding Heirloom, he co-founded PocketList and was an early team member at tech companies such as Faraday Future ($FFIE), Fullscreen (acquired by AT&T), and Bit Kitchen (acquired by Medium as Knowable).