TeachUNITED

Kathy has been working in the field of International Education and Development for over 30 years. Since 2013 she has been the Executive Director of Global Education Fund (GEF) based in Boulder, Colorado. GEF’s focus is on providing small grants and other supports to local education entrepreneurs and their organizations focused on quality learning for disadvantaged and marginalized girls and boys operating in Guatemala, Kenya and India. Prior to GEF, Kathy worked with the Aga Khan Foundation for 20 years: 3 years in their London office and 17 years in their head office in Geneva, Switzerland. During the last 8 years she was the Co-Director of AKF’s Education program. Her work with AKF entailed provision of strategic, technical and mentoring support to the 13 AKF country offices and education programs being implemented in Eastern and West Africa, South and Central Asia and the Middle East. Kathy has also previously served as Co-Director of the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development (CGECCD), a consortium of donor agencies, NGOs and regional networks, and served on its Executive Board for 6 years. She began her career teaching kindergarten and Second Grade and then served as a Peace Corp volunteer in Honduras for 2.5 years and later trained Peace Corps Volunteers in Costa Rica. She has authored and co-authored a range of articles and reports related to education and early childhood development – many of which focused on early transition into primary school and early learning. She has a Master’s and Ph.D from the University of Iowa.

Francois Chaubard is the CEO of Focal Systems, a deep learning computer vision company focused on automating brick and mortar retail. This technology drives operational improvements, increases sales, and the in-store experience.

Prior to founding Focal Systems, Mr. Chaubard worked at Apple as a deep learning researcher on secretive projects. Before that, he attended Stanford University as a dual masters in CS and EE where he researched deep learning and computer vision under Fei Fei Li, the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab at Stanford University. Before that, he was a missile guidance algorithm researcher at Lockheed Martin on the U.S. AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense Program. Before that, he received a bachelors from University of Delaware in Mathematics/Mechanical Engineering.

As a Managing Director of the Foundation, Stephanie Cornell plays a lead role in sourcing new investments and working with the leadership of those organizations as an operating partner and board member as they grow to build capacity and to achieve their maximum impact. As a member of the Foundation’s senior leadership team, she also helps to execute the Foundation’s strategy and goals and contributes to its thought leadership and external outreach. She currently serves on the boards of DRK portfolio organizations Center on Rural Innovation, Healthy Learners, IRAP, Khyeti, Merit America, Suyo, TeachUNITED, and Tiny Totos Kenya. She previously served on the boards of alumni organizations Catie’s Closet, City Health Works, Clean Energy Trust, Crisis Text Line, D-Rev, Lava Mae, Upstream, and Y2Y.

Prior to joining DRK, Stephanie co-founded three social ventures: Strategic Grant Partners, a coalition of families that combines philanthropic investing and pro bono consulting to address issues for Massachusetts children in poverty; Project Healthy Children, which designs and implements food fortification programs in developing countries; and the Maranyundo Initiative, a boarding school for girls and teacher enrichment program in Rwanda.

She completed the Harvard Advanced Leadership fellowship and has been an advisor and board member for several nonprofit and philanthropic organizations including Demand Abolition, Year Up, Partners in Health, WGBH, RefugePoint, Resurge, Share Our Strength and Amazon Conservation Team.

Stephanie holds a BA in English and Environmental Studies from Oberlin College and an MBA from Stanford University.

Scott is an educational software technologist. At Pearson, he leads teams developing products that foster reading comprehension, writing skills and oral fluency. He is a long-time advocate, developer and researcher of learner-centered software environments. Scott enjoys volunteering to build houses with Habitat for Humanity and helping at his daughter’s school. He and his wife and daughter live near Longmont, Colorado.

Julian Farrior is the founder and CEO of Backflip Studios, a Boulder Colorado based mobile game company focused on bringing innovative and thoughtful titles to an expanding group of casual gamers. Backflip has had numerous top ranked apps and seen more than 300,000,000 downloads in their first five years of operation. Their games, which include popular titles such as DragonVale, Paper Toss, NinJump, Ragdoll Blaster, Army of Darkness: Defense, and SpellFall are played by tens of millions of users every month. In 2009 Paper Toss was the most downloaded game of the year and in 2012 DragonVale was the top grossing iPad game of the year. In 2013 Hasbro acquired a majority stake in Backflip Studios.

Prior to Backflip, Julian served as a VP and angel investor at Earthscape, a company that also had early success in the app store. Previously, Julian spent seven years at Yahoo! in various management roles the most recent of which included heading up emerging markets search. He is also an investor and advisor in several early stage tech startups including “TapToLearn”, “Pepper Data” and “BabyBytes”.

In 2011, Julian won the Esprit Entrepreneur of Distinction award from the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. In 2012 Backflip was chosen as a Colorado Company to watch, the same year that their game “DragonVale” was nominated for Best New Game of the Year and Best Game Design of the Year by industry peers at GDC Online. In 2013 Backflip won the ACG Emerging Growth Company Award. Julian was awarded Colgate University’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2014 and Backflip has had three games so far this year selected by Apple as an “Editors Choice”.

Julian serves on Colgate University’s West Coast Advisory Council, Silicon Flatirons E.I. board and was named this year to the Mobile Game Developer’s Hall of Fame. He is a frequent speaker at leading industry conferences, such as the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Gamesbeat and DICE. Julian is a lifelong video and board gamer with an obsessive streak for pinball. He studied at Colgate University and Northwestern University.

Gregg has been in the homebuilding, development, and real estate investment businesses since 1991 when he left the management consulting firm of Bain & Company to join The Ryland Group. During his ten years of service to Morrison Homes (the US operation of Britain’s largest homebuilder, George Wimpey, PLC – now Taylor Morrison) from 1994 to 2004, he served in several leadership roles.

Gregg started K2 Ventures, LLC in 2005. K2 identified, entitled, purchased and developed residential communities for regional builders as well as housing giants Beazer Homes and the Ryland Group. In 2007, K2 formed a strategic development partnership with Jim Chapman Communities to purchase, develop, and construct active adult communities in the Southeast. This team developed 328 lots and constructed over 200 active adult homes. Additionally, during the great recession, this group built or completed 150 additional homes for commercial banks and opportunistic investors with total fee billings of over $5 million. Price ranges of the homes on which this team has worked range from the very low $100s to over $1 million in communities from Villa Rica to Lake Oconee.

Gregg started Acadia Homes & Neighborhoods (Acadia) in 2010. As “A New Builder for a New Time,” Acadia Homes & Neighborhoods’ strategy was to restore viability to the Atlanta new home neighborhoods that bore the impact of the housing market’s collapse in 2008 and 2009. Acadia started operations in 2010 and in 2013 was recognized as Atlanta’s 5th fastest growing privately held company and its 10th largest homebuilder. In 2016 Gregg sold Acadia Homes & Neighborhoods to Taylor Morrison for $85 million.

Gregg currently serves as Vice Chairman and partner of The Ardent Companies (Ardent). Ardent is a private real estate investment company specializing in opportunistic real estate investments. Ardent’s primary investment strategies include specialty/transitional lending and selective/opportunistic equity investing. Since its founding, the firm has invested in more than 100 individual transactions in 22 states totaling more than $1.1 billion in aggregate capital.

Gregg is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce and holds a Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Real Estate Finance from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He sits on the McIntire School’s Advisory Board and is a Board member of the Jekyll Brewing Company. Gregg is active in the Georgia Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and is the past Chairman of the Major Gifts Committee at the Lovett School. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

Heather Hiebsch brings two decades of experience in K-12 education and innovation. She earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Education with a concentration in Secondary Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she later received a Master’s Degree in Education Leadership, Renewal, and Change with Principal’s Licensure from Colorado State University. She has been a teacher, researcher, and consultant, working with multiple school districts. Most recently, Heather was the founding principal of the PSD Global Academy, an innovative K-12 hybrid school whose mission was to provide a “Global Education in a Local Community.” A pioneer in the field of blended and personalized learning, PGA became a nationally recognized proof points school, with student outcomes and growth featured in case studies by the Christensen Institute, Evergreen Education, Fuel Ed, and Forbes. Heather also serves on the Board of Directors for the iLearn Collaborative, and her work has been presented at the International Council for Online and Blended Learning (iNACOL), District Administration magazine, and EdWeek. She is passionate about connecting personalized learning and global awareness, and she is inspired to be part of positive transformation for schools and students. Heather is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she enjoys the outdoors with her husband, daughter, son, and extended family and friends.

Bruce is Managing Director of Investure LLC, a leader in the endowment and foundation investment management industry. Investure’s clients include Carnegie Endowment, Smith College and Middlebury College. Bruce and his wife Sue live with their three sons (Max, Charlie and Calvin) in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Paul Pasin grew up in the Chicago area, studied business and law, and embarked upon his professional career driven by a core life purpose: to increase happiness and reduce suffering. He spent the early part of his career working as an attorney and social worker at the Chicago Legal Clinic and Jane Addams Hull House. In 1992, Paul had an opportunity to join the family business, Radio Flyer Inc., in an operations role in their Chicago factory.

Paul has spent the last twenty-five years as an owner and leader partnering with the outstanding Radio Flyer team to fulfill the company’s mission of bringing smiles and creating warm memories that last a lifetime. Delivering on this mission inspired Paul to build himself as a leader, to move to China for ten years, to create and lead a global operations team, to study best business practices and implement them throughout the organization, and play a lead role in the overall company process of transitioning Radio Flyer from a small poor performing manufacturing driven business into an innovative, fast growing, best place to work, and profitable global brand.

Paul finds his greatest fulfillment in his relationships with his wife, Jane, and their two children, Joy and Augustine. Paul is an avid hiker, paddle boarder, bird watcher, fisherman, gardener, and genuinely loves the outdoors.

Eric Roza leads the Oracle Data Cloud, the trusted, independent provider of Audiences and Analytics for virtually every leading digital publisher, 100% of the AdAge Top 100 Advertisers, and thousands of other marketers and platforms in over 100 countries. Roza and his wife, Melissa, own Boulder’s CrossFit Sanitas, repeatedly named one of the top 5 in the US. A tireless advocate for building healthy, winning cultures, Roza’s passions include health & wellness and lifelong learning. He is also a singer-songwriter and father of four.

Ross Wehner is Founder of World Leadership School, the mission of which is to “partner with K-12 schools to reimagine learning and create tomorrow’s leaders.” Ross Wehner began his career working as a journalist in Latin America in the 1990s, during which time he wrote about the end of Chile’s Pinochet regime, the sweep of democracy across the region and problems such as human rights, climate change and poverty. Ross went onto work as a classroom teacher and instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School. His focus is helping K-12 schools make the cultural shift towards authentic global education and leadership programs that help prepare students for a volatile and fast-changing world.