The Rethinking Education Sessions: Recent Episodes
Rethink Education
Welcome to The Rethinking Education Sessions, the all things education podcast brought to you by Rethink Education, an edtech-focused venture capital firm. Through conversations with entrepreneurs, educators, and investors, we will explore the past, present, and future of education. Our investment thesis drives us to find entrepreneurs creating new ways of teaching, learning, and supporting students. We strive to help vulnerable and disadvantaged learners reach their potential. We strive to transform and improve the way everyone learns and works, everywhere. And we try to make our portfolio and our ecosystem more diverse and more inclusive. This podcast will explore what a more effective, equitable, and innovative education system looks like and how we get there. To learn more about Rethink Education, visit our website or find us on LinkedIn or Twitter. Thanks for listening!
Does school finance feel like a black box? Are you having trouble finding reliable resources for the inside scoop? This episode is for you! We chat with two experts in the field: Jess Gartner, CEO & Founder, and Jason Becker, Chief Product Officer of Allovue, a portfolio companies of Rethink Education. Allovue works with K-12 leaders to streamline, simplify, and manage school budgets. In this conversation, we dive into the hidden complexities of school finance, the shortfalls of the current system, and how to make school budgets more just.
Books Mentioned:
- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers
On the latest episode of the Rethinking Education Sessions, Matt Greenfield and Amanda Beaudoin sit down with Jamie Merisotis, the President and CEO of Lumina Foundation. Lumina Foundation is the nation’s largest private foundation committed solely to enrolling and graduating more students from colleges. The Foundation is also a good friend and LP of Rethink Education. Merisotis has committed his career to increasing educational opportunities among historically underrepresented populations. Under his leadership at Lumina, the foundation has been working towards the goal that by 2025, 60% of Americans will hold high-quality degrees, certificates, and other credentials. In this podcast episode, Merisotis talks with the Rethink team about his life before joining Lumina, Lumina’s strategies for expanding access to and attainment of higher-education, how Lumina thinks about equity, and more.
Jamie Merisotis’s latest book:
- Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines
Books Merisotis is reading:
- The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation by Natalie Moore
- Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
Companies mentioned:
- Guild Education
- Care Academy
- Rosalyn
We were thrilled to welcome a new Managing Partner to the Rethink Education team earlier this month, Andre Bennin. A lot of you may know Dre from his role as Managing Director of Corporate Development for the Strada Education Network or his investing leadership as a Managing Partner Juvo Ventures. In today’s episode of the podcast, we dive deeper into Dre’s background from his childhood in Cote d’lvoire to his pre-med days at BYU to his policy work to his impressive investment track record. Listen in to get to know the newest member of the Rethink team!
Books Mentioned in the Episode:
· A Knock at Midnight by Brittany Barnett
· Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich
· A New Culture of Learning by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown
· Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Today we are joined by Aaron Friedland, Founder & Executiver Director of the Simbi Foundation and Founder and CEO of Simbi. The Simbi Foundation is a nonprofit focused on providing quality education to refugees through its portable solar-powered classrooms. Simbi is a seed-stage edtech startup developing tools to help students learn to read through the method of reading while listening. In this episode, we will dive into Aaron’s childhood struggle with dyslexia and how that led to two advanced economics degrees and extensive research which eventually morphed into Simbi and the Simbi Foundation and a lifelong passion of helping make literacy and education more accessible. We will learn much more about how both organizations work and how we can get involved in the fight for quality education.
In today’s episode:
· Simbi
· Simbi Foundation
· Impact in the 21st Century Podcast
· Books mentioned: Island by Aldous Huxley; Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
· Startups mentioned: Skills Union; Gradely
Today we talk with Kim Smith, Executive Director of the League of Innovative Schools, a national network of forward-thinking education leaders who are striving to improve student outcomes through the smart use of learning technologies and innovative practices. Throughout her career Kim has worked to improve digital access and tools in education and to create a more equitable education system. Kim’s work has spanned various innovative and influential non-profit and for-profit companies focusing on education including the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, PBS, Discovery Education, the Annenberg Institute, and now Digital Promise.
In this episode, we talk with Kim about her career path, explore inside the League of Innovative Schools, and contemplate issues of equity in education and what Kim and the League are doing to solve them.
Recommended Book: The Lost Education of Horace Tate by Vanessa Siddle Walker
In a recent blog post, Matt Greenfield detailed the key themes in education technology that Rethink Education is focused on and outlined four areas of study for our research in 2021. The first area of research is on working learners. We will share our findings through blog posts, events, and through our conversations on this podcast, starting today with David Blake. David Blake is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Degreed and the Co-founder and CEO of both LearnIn and BookClub. In today’s episode, Matt Greenfield talks with David Blake about how Degreed transformed enterprise learning and how David is working to build pathways to lifelong learning for all workers.
Resources Discussed in Today’s Show:
- Companies:
- Degreed
- BookClub
- LearnIn
- Outlier
- Books:
- The Expertise Economy by David Blake and Kelly Palmer
- The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
- Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Today we are joined by Michael Feldstein to discuss the latest in education technology. Michael is the creator of e-Literate and the Empirical Educator Project and has spent his career in education from teaching to consulting to working at large enterprises focused on education. On todays’ episode we will talk to Michael about his latest views on what education needs, where it is going and how technology plays into that.
Resources Discussed in Today’s Show:
- eLiterate Blog
- Michael’s essay on scaling the seminar
- Beyond the Hole in the Wall by Sugata Mitra
- Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
- Open AI GPT-3 beta
