EdTech is one of the strong – and growing – verticals in the New York tech ecosystem, so we decided that it was high time that someone turned the spotlight on some of the industry’s innovators. It being somewhat out of the bailiwick of the team here, we reached out to people in the NYC EdTech community to solicit their input and ask not only for their nominations, but their reasons why they found their nominees awesome. A big thank you from us, for all of you who participated and without further ado, the New York EduTech’s picks for the people in their industry who are just plain awesome.
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Founder’s note: AlleyWatch does not have a financial relationship with any of those included. This list is in no particular order nor is it a ranking. In fact, the =RAND() function on excel was used to determine order.
Mattan Griffel
Mattan Griffel is a rock star. It’s that simple. A self-taught developer, he started teaching a class on Skillshare, which ended up turning into One Month(which he co-founded), a Y Combinator-backed startup here in NYC. Focused on changing the way people learn throughout their lives, they’ve empowered 15,000 students so far to build website and applications from scratch. But that’s just the beginning. They’re expanding into One Month non-technical classes to give people all over the world access to great teachers and educational content for less than the cost of college.
Oh, he’s also a partner at GrowHack, the world’s first growth hacking shop for startups based in New York City. Oh, and he’s a teacher at General Assembly, and NY Ambassador to the Sandbox Network, a collection of young leaders under 30.
He has also advised companies like Pepsico, Bloomberg, GM, NYSE, and JPMorgan, spoken at New York University, First Round Capital and Social Media Week, and has also been featured in AlleyWatch, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Mashable and The Next Web.
Snapshot:
Name: Mattan Griffel
Title: Co-founder and CEO
Company: One Month
Keep up with Mattan:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: AboutMe
Jess Brondo
Jess Brondo is the founder and CEO of Admittedly,a college discovery platform that matches students with ideal universities based on personality metrics from psychometric tests – and shows students their chances of admission through personalized “Admittability Scores,” providing customized recommendations for improvement based on interests, location, budget, and goals.
She knows her stuff. She worked for 10 years as a private college admissions counselor and elite test prep instructor at her first company, The Edge in College Prep. Through its offices in NY, London, Buenos Aires, and South Florida, she worked with nearly 500 students from 14 countries who were all accepted to one of their top 3 schools. But she realized that students who could afford the high prices of private counselors were getting beneficial advice on how to improve their chances, and those who could not afford the steep price tag were often left with outdated options that she had actually used back in the day when she completed her Princeton application on a typewriter! Yeah, that had to change, which is when she left her company and founded Admittedly with co-founder Emily Cole, who has a PhD in Personality Psychology and a Master’s in Child Development. Nothing like someone – or two – who are out there leveling the playing field.
Snapshot:
Name: Jess Brondo
Title: Founder and CEO
Company: Admittedly
Keep up with Jess:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: YoursTrulyNYC
Jake Schwartz
Jake Schwartz is co-founder and CEO of General Assembly (along with Adam Pritzker, Matthew Brimer and Brad Hargreaves) offering online and in-person courses and workshops in business-related subjects and tools, such as marketing, coding, design, product development, and data science. Under his leadership, GA has scaled to twelve cities (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, and Washington, D.C.) training tens of thousands of students of all ages, and in many cases, helping them to find their first jobs., And they’re adding new classes and speakers all the time, to keep up with the industry’s ever-shifting landscape. He’s got his finger on the pulse. Awesome!
Snapshot:
Name: Jake Schwartz
Position: CEO & Co-founder
Company: General Assembly
Keep up with Jake:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: General Assembly
Avi Flombaum
Avi Flombaum founded the Flatiron School to create a sustainable talent pipeline for the New York tech community – and to give passionate people the skills required to get really great jobs. So, he created a curriculum for a 16-week immersive program in web application development to prepare them to be junior developers. Flombaum also mentors the students through to graduation and job placement. As if that isn’t awesome enough, he also founded the NYC on Rails Meetup.
Snapshot:
Name: Avi Flombaum
Title: Dean
Company: Flatiron School
Keep up with Avi:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: Facebook
Monica Burns
Monica Burns advises educational organizations and teachers on how to use technology to reach children and families and provides professional development to teachers. In her current role as an independent education consultant, she work with teachers to make technology integration exciting and accessible at all grade levels and provide support to companies looking to strengthen their products in this field. She does all of this through her company, ClassTechTips, not only providing software to make life easier at the classroom level, but also demystifying tech – and making it fun – at the student level. And they’re never too young to learn. Awesome!
Snapshot:
Name: Monica Burns
Position: EdTech & Curriculum Consultant, Apple Distinguished Educator and EdTech Blogger, Founder, ClassTechTips
Company: ClassTechTips
Keep up with Monica:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: LinkedIn
Andrew Cohen
If Brad Feld wants us to do more, faster, Andrew Cohen wants us to learn more faster, and that’s what Brainscape is about: it’s a web and mobile education platform that uses cognitive science to help you learn things faster, using data, technology, and a network of the world’s top subject-matter experts. The mission: to create a smarter world by simplifying and accelerating the learning process.
For the record, Cohen is a self-taught programmer. He’s also a huge cognitive science geek, a mentor at TechStars, an instructor at General Assembly, a polyglot, a foodie. And a self-described (and unrepentant) smartass. An awesome combination, if you ask us.
Snapshot:
Name: Andrew Cohen
Position: Founder, CEO
Company: Brainscape
Keep up with Andrew:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: WeAreNYTech
Ron Goldman
Over the past decade, Ron Goldman has pioneered the use of gaming and simulation technology for learning experiences in education, health and behavioral health.
Ron Goldman is the co-founder and CEO of Kognito, a leader in driving positive change in behaviors through the use of immersive learning experiences with virtual humans. Each conversation experience simulates the interactions and behaviors of practicing health professionals, patients, caregivers, students and educators in real life situations, speaking of which Kognito’s online and mobile programs are used by hundreds of thousands of individuals and professionals at federal, state and local government agencies, hospitals, and non-profit organizations in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada. Kognito’s online programs for educators and students now reach over 33% of middle and high school teachers and have been used at over 450 colleges and universities.
He has been invited to speak at The White House, the CDC and SAMHSA.
Goldman is a pioneer in the use of gaming and simulation technology for learning experiences in education, health and behavioral health. All in all, pretty awesome!
Snapshot:
Name: Ron Goldman
Position: Co-founder, CEO
Company: Kognito
Keep up with Ron:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: LinkedIn
Mike Zamansky
Mike Zamanksy is the guy who built Stuyvesant High School‘s computer science program – the only program that has consistently made industry-ready software engineers, right out of high school – as anyone who has attended a New York Tech Meetup and has witnessed some of the tech the students are developing.
More importantly, Zamansky is the founder of CSTUY,a non-profit dedicated to bringing the same level of CS education as he has gotten into Stuyvesant to more kids. They just finished their first summer program – 46 kids from 30 schools across the city doing really amazing CS work and loving it. It may not be EdTech in the strictest sense of the term, but providing high school students with a relevant tech education is important. Keep up the awesome work!
Snapshot:
Name: Mike Zamansky
Position: Coordinator of Computer Science Program
Company: Stuyvesant High School
Keep up with Mike:
Twitter
Linkedin
Image credit: Facebook
Jeremy Snepar
Jeremy Snepar is the CEO & Co-Founder of the New York Code + Design Academy, where he focuses on making technology and programming education accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. Concerned with the lack of computer science education throughout our school systems, from elementary through college, Snepar launched the Code + Design Academy to fill the gap. He believes that understanding the languages that power the digital economy are becoming increasingly important in the 21st century, and hey, someone has to train the next generation of coders and designers. You’re doing an awesome job, Jeremy!
Snapshot:
Name: Jeremy Snepar
Title: CEO, Co-founder
Company: New York Code + Design Academy (NYCDA)
Keep up with Jeremy:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: NYCDA
Lissa Johnson
Lissa Johnson is a solo founder and is using animated science mysteries to inspire a new generation of scientists. Mosa Mack Science utilizes inquiry-based animations to teach science processing skills and promote diversity in middles school science education. Mosa Mack has been featured at the Institutes of Health, the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering (SECME), NYU Poly STEM Center for K-12 Education, EdSurge, the Children’s Media Association and Discovery Educator’s Network. Mosa Mack Science won the 2014 SIIA Innovation Incubator’s Educator’s Choice award in May. That is awesome.
Snapshot:
Name: Lissa Johnson
Position: Founder, CEO
Company: Mosa Mack Science
Keep up with Lissa:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: LinkedIn
Adrienne Garber
Adrienne Garber is a doctoral student at Columbia’s Teachers College and previously worked at the the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL). While there she helped develop and promote the education tool Mediathread, an innovative platform that supports multimedia analysis within a communal environment, and that’s free to the public. She also was active in public forums like Columbia’s EdLab and NYC EdTech Meetups. She’s awesome because of her energy promoting education, especially to people new to the education world.
Snapshot:
Name: Adrienne Garber
Title: Instructional Designer, School of Continuing Education, Columbia University
Company: Columbia University
Keep up with Adrienne:
LinkedIn
Twitter
Image credit: LinkedIn
Jason DeRoner
Jason DeRoner is TeachBoost’s visionary co-founder. He left the world of consulting to apply his business and programming acumen to education, motivated by the belief that we’re not even scratching the surface when it comes to the expertise that exists within districts and schools. An Imagine K12 alum, he founded TeachBoost to help schools better leverage educators’ expertise to master their craft and coach their peers, all in the service of improved student outcomes. While bootstrapping for the first two years before raising capital, he assembled a dedicated, hard-working, mission-driven team, and he actively supports their professional and creative pursuits. He is an entrepreneur-in-residence at 4.0 Schools, and his company is the recipient of the UK’s GREAT Tech Award.
Snapshot:
Name: Jason DeRoner
Title: Co-Founder and CEO
Company: TeachBoost
Keep up with Jason:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: LinkedIn
Dan Friedman
Dan Friedman and Darrell Silver founded Thinkful in 2012, because they were on a mission to reinvent education, Thinkful is a school that trains the workforce in the technology skills necessary for the 21st Century, and have developed a method of online teaching that emphasizes practical, sustainable skills that prepares students to achieve their career goals. Mentors included. Dan is a Thiel Fellow, previously worked at RRE Ventures, and was recently included in Forbes 30 Under 30.
Sometimes, it’s best to let a former student tell the story of why Thinkful – and Friedman – are awesome. “Thinkful is making it possible for learners with full-time jobs to level up their technical skills in an affordable way. Their curated project-based curriculum and weekly mentorship means students are more likely to learn the skills they need to be valuable in today’s economy. Any discussion of Movers and Shakers in NYC’s EdTech scene would be lacking without mentioning Thinkful.” Thoughtful.
Snapshot:
Name: Dan Friedman
Title: Co-founder
Company: Thinkful
Keep up with Dan:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: Twitter
Katharine (Katie) Nielson
Katie Nielson has a PhD in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) from the University of Maryland, where her research focused on technology-mediated language training and the intersection of SLA theory and language teaching. At Voxy, an educational technology company developing innovative mobile and web-based language learning products for ESL learners, she runs efficacy initiatives and language learning content development. She knows of what she speaks, in any language: Nielson has conducted extensive research for the U.S. government on language learning products, served as the Academic Director for Foreign Languages at the University of Maryland University College, and developed numerous award-winning language courses. Here’s a video to demonstrate her awesomeness!
Snapshot:
Name: Katharine (Katie) Nielson
Title: Chief Education Officer
Company: Voxy
Keep up with Katie:
Twitter
LinkedIn
Image credit: Twitter
