Summary

Our guest today is Jennifer Carolan. Jennifer started her career as a classroom teacher in a Chicago district. She then moved to California to attend Stanford, and there got inspired to use her teaching experience in support od tech founders. So she joined NewSchools Venture Fund where she learned the craft of VC, while also co-creating and teaching a course at Stanford. After that, Jennifer co-founded Reach Capital, with a first fund in 2000, a second fund in 2018 and a third fund more recently.

In this episode, Jennifer and I talk about how student engagement is an outcome of strong pedagogy. We then describe a new generation of global education companies that are partnering with school districts and we caution policy makers that need to rise to the occasion in order to keep innovation from escaping the public school system. Finally we talk about different promising edtech categories and end up with the conclusion that parents are the stakeholders that still lack a lot of support in the ecosystem.

Here are some resources mentioned in our discussion: 

• A tweet by Jennifer encapsulating her belief in pedagogy-led edtech startups
  • https://twitter.com/jencarolan/status/1402677758820438018
• Our conversation with Amir from Outschool - https://blog.enrollhand.com/learning-is-more-than-a-consumer-experience-with-amir-nathoo/
• Jennifer's hopeful piece on EdSurge serving as a call to action for policy makers - https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-08-23-teachers-drive-innovation-this-time-will-they-do-so-within-or-outside-the-system
• Jennifer's tweet highlighting the increased collaboration between school districts and startups
  • https://twitter.com/jencarolan/status/1422648800192122886
• The Chart of the Century - https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1350826322642296835
• Reach Capital's companies, including the ones mentioned in our discussion - https://www.reachcapital.com/companies/
• Harari's book mentioned by Jennifer as a good depiction of the new age we need to prepare students for - https://www.ynharari.com/book/21-lessons-book/
• A particular mention of Guardians Collective, mentionned by Jennifer as an interesting model to support parents - https://www.aboutgc.com

Where to learn more about Jennifer:

• Twitter - https://twitter.com/jencarolan
• Website - https://www.reachcapital.com

Where to learn more about Enrollhand: 

• Website - www.enrollhand.com
• Webinar - https://webinar-replay.enrollhand.com