On Balance

In this On the Clock episode, Dr. Rod Berger sits down with new Strategos Group Partner and former Hillsborough County Public Schools Superintendent Addison Davis.

Davis is an accomplished education leader with a wealth of experience in the field. As Superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) from March 2020 to July 2023, he made significant contributions to one of the largest school systems in the country.

Under Davis’ leadership, HCPS experienced remarkable improvements, including a rise in the district’s state academic ranking from 35th to 19th, the highest in its history. He successfully guided the district through the COVID-19 pandemic and overcame a deficit of more than $150 million. 

He also played a crucial role in reducing the number of underperforming schools, improving the graduation rate from 87% to 89%, the highest in the district’s history. 

One of his greatest accomplishments was reducing 28 historically “D” and “F” schools to only five over his 39-month tenure. 

Davis’ achievements extend beyond Hillsborough County. During his tenure as Superintendent of Schools for Clay County, he led efforts that resulted in significant academic progress, including an impressive jump in the district’s statewide academic ranking from 20th to 7th. He also oversaw a notable increase in the graduation rate from 84% to 93%, narrowing the achievement gap in the process.

Before his time in Clay County, Davis was the Chief of Schools for the Duval County Public School System, the country’s 20th largest school district. He served Duval County Schools for eighteen years, beginning as a teacher before becoming an Assistant Principal, Principal, Executive Director of Turnaround, Middle School Cluster Chief, and then Region Superintendent.

In addition to his accomplishments, Davis has been recognized for his contributions to education. He was named Superintendent of the Year by the Florida Association for Career and Technical Education and received the Allen Temple A.M.E. Church Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration Award. Davis' commitment to community engagement during the pandemic earned him the Whitney M. Young Service Award. He is also a member of Chiefs for Change, a distinguished network of district and state education leaders.

Welcome to another episode of On Balance with your host, Dr. Rod Berger. In today's episode, we have a fascinating discussion with guest Kristin Greco, CEO of Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR). This episode dives deep into the important and often overlooked topic of trauma in schools and its impact on students, teachers, and communities. Kristin brings her expertise and insights, drawing from her background in mental health and extensive experience in developing and implementing strategic goals in education. Dr. Rod Berger and Kristin Greco shed light on the complexities of trauma and its relevance in the education sector.

Join us as we explore the profound influence of trauma, from its manifestation in students to the challenges it presents for educators. Together, we will uncover the importance of assessment, professional development, and empathy in creating a supportive environment for our young learners. So, get ready to gain valuable insights and perspectives on trauma in schools on this episode of On Balance with Kristin Greco.

Key Moments

[00:05:05] Understanding how trauma in youth has evolved over time.

[00:07:18] How has trauma impacted the classroom as a collective?

[00:12:58] COVID brought mental health to the forefront, and there are insufficient resources for schools.

[00:15:32] PAR customers partner for data and dialogue, and to cope.

[00:18:11] The importance of maintaining leadership, responsibility, and staying informed.

[00:21:25] Professional development, support, listening, empathy, workload challenges.

Connect with Kristin Greco, MBA

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristin-greco-4bb4396/

Website: https://www.parinc.com/

Resource Mentioned

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network: https://www.nctsn.org/⁠

Connect with Dr. Rod Berger

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodbergerpsyd/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/strategos-group-public-affairs/

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PODCASTS

🎧 Capital Class with Adam Giery: https://www.strategosgroup.com/podcast

🎧 On the Clock with Todd Dallas Lamb: https://www.strategosgroup.com/podcast-on-the-clock

🎧 Swimming Upstream with Tom Luna: https://swimming-upstream.captivate.fm/listen

🎧 On Balance with Dr. Rod Berger: https://www.strategosgroup.com/podcast-on-balance

🎧 To the Point with Jim Horne and Doug Mesecar: https://to-the-point.captivate.fm/

Produced by Old Soul: https://bit.ly/3KuYfrD

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#educationmanagement #educationleadership #education

In this episode of "On Balance," Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Christopher "Chip" Paucek, the co-founder and CEO of 2U, Inc.

About Chip Paucek and 2U

2U, Inc. (Nasdaq: TWOU), described by Forbes Magazine as the “nation’s leading provider of software for universities” delivering digital higher education at scale.Paucek's innovative work at 2U has earned him many accolades, including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2012, the Goldman Sachs 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs Award in 2013, and multiple Highest Rated CEO awards from Glassdoor. In 2017, Paucek was named among America's best chief executives by Institutional Investor magazine, ranking third among mid-cap technology, media, and telecom companies. He is a leading voice and speaker on entrepreneurship and the global education and technology landscape. Paucek also sits on 2U’s Board of Directors.Paucek has been involved in education ventures since the early 1990s. Prior to 2U, Paucek served as CEO of Smarterville, Inc., the parent company of Hooked on Phonics. Paucek began his entrepreneurial career in 1993 when he co-founded his first company, Cerebellum Corporation, which produced the award-winning educational television program and video series Standard Deviants. He led Cerebellum as Co-CEO until 2003. In 2004, Paucek took a break from the business world to serve as deputy campaign manager for the successful re-election of United States Senator Barbara Mikulski.Paucek holds a B.A. from The George Washington University and an M.B.A. from the 2U-powered MBA@UNC program at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. As a native of South Florida, he is an avid Miami Dolphins fan. Paucek lives in Annapolis, MD, with his wife Gabbi and two sons Noah and Henry.

A respected educator, scholar, and policy expert, Dr. LaRock NFTE's President and Chief Executive Officer.

He came to NFTE from the Commonwealth Corporation, Massachusetts’ public-private state authority focused on workforce development and regional economic development. As president and CEO of Commonwealth, Dr. LaRock chaired Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning, producing a blueprint for innovative work-based learning models that garnered significant investment from major foundations.  Previously he served as a senior education advisor to the late U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, leading work on the renewal of the federal Higher Education Act, as well as passage of a law that provided $20 billion in new Pell Grants to college students. As education policy director for former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, he helped author a K-12 education law that enabled turnarounds in low-performing school districts and helped the state win $250 million through the U.S. Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” program.

For much of the past decade, Dr. LaRock has worked as a teacher, scholar, and university administrator focused on experiential learning, entrepreneurship, and the future of work. As chief of staff to the president of Northeastern University, he served on the leadership team that completed the institution’s transformation from a commuter college to a top-ranked global research university. He has also served as Professor of the Practice of Law and Policy at Northeastern and as a Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities program.

Dr. LaRock grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of public school educators, and is a  proud graduate of the city’s public schools. He went on to earn his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate at Harvard University and his law degree at Georgetown University. He currently resides in Massachusetts with his wife Christina, a sign language interpreter, and their daughter Callie.

In this On Balance episode, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Doug Dennerline, CEO of Betterworks.

Doug has worked in Silicon Valley since 1982 - starting with HP selling the first PC, followed by 12 years at 3Com, and 12 years at Cisco, massively scaling those companies. In his last role at Cisco, he became the CEO of Webex post the acquisition of Webex by Cisco.

Doug has run SaaS companies ever since. He’s worked for many famous leaders - Marc Benioff, John Chambers, Lars Delgaard - and learned many lessons about what it takes to grow and scale high-performing teams. 

Kelsey is a member of Boston Consulting Group's Public Sector and People & Organization practices as well as a member of the firm’s education leadership team in the US. Kelsey serves as the Dallas office lead, as well as leading the Pride@BCG network for the US. Kelsey focuses primarily on the education, employment, and welfare sector, covering topics including strategy, change management, performance management, consumer insight, and organization design and transformation.

Her client work has included supporting the development and implementation of a comprehensive early childhood education strategy—from birth to third grade—for one of the largest urban school districts in the US. She also supported the transformation of a community college to align programs to the workforce needs of the community and increase student success and developed a case for change and long-range strategic planning to guide a state legislature with deep dives on education, health care, and economic development in rural communities.

Kelsey is active in the Dallas community, and is on the board of Child Poverty Action Lab (CPAL), and Lumin Education, a Dallas-based charter school network.

Bill Salak has more than 20 years of experience overseeing large-scale development projects and more than 24 years of experience in web application architecture and development. Bill founded and served as CTO of multiple Internet and web development companies, leading technology projects for companies including Age of Learning, AOL, Educational Testing Systems, Film LA, Hasbro, HBO, Highlights for Children, NBC-Universal, and the U.S. Army. Bill currently serves as the CTO of Brainly, the world's leading learning platform worldwide with the most extensive Knowledge Base for all school subjects and grades.

Ashley Naranjo, M.Ed.

Education and Outreach Strategist, Office of the Under Secretary for Education, Smithsonian Institution

Naranjo is a museum educator specializing in the use of digital resources for teaching and learning. She currently manages distance learning initiatives and education partnerships for the Smithsonian. Portfolio highlights have included: the Smithsonian Quests digital badging program, Smithsonian Online Education Conferences, Smithsonian Learning Lab nationwide teacher professional development, Teachers of the Year programming at the Smithsonian, “Explore with Smithsonian Experts” video series, and Smithsonian print publication guides. 

Learning Lab link here: https://learninglab.si.edu/

National Education Summit information can be found here: https://www.si.edu/educators/smithsonian-national-education-summit-2023

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-naranjo/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/smithsonian-education/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashleymnaranjo?lang=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/naranjoa

  Social Media Accounts:

Facebook - @SmithsonianEducation

Twitter - @SmithsonianEdu

LinkedIn - @SmithsonianEducation

Advait co-founded GoGuardian to provide K-12 schools with new technologies that enable students to engage in a better learning experience. His dedication to help unlock student potential in education is made clear through his mission of using the internet in an open, but safe way. In his role as CEO of GoGuardian, Advait brings his passion for using data and technology to solve problems in education.

Based on his accomplishments in education and technology, Advait was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Education in 2016, as a finalist for Los Angeles Business Journal’'s CTO of the Year in 2017, as a finalist for Ernst & Young's prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Greater Los Angeles in 2018, and for Los Angeles Business Journal’s 20 in Their 20s in 2019.

Before co-founding GoGuardian, Advait worked at Google as an engineer, combining innovation with the power of scale and helping to launch key products, such as Google Pay (formerly Google Wallet). Advait holds a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA.

Follow Advait on LinkedIn

While working at many STEM corporations (IBM, Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, Sandia National Laboratories), Hunter saw that it was always difficult to find qualified Americans for open STEM jobs. He discovered this was because the United States ranked 25th in the world in science. He realized that this was not sustainable for our economy, national defense, and children’s future. This is when he decided to augment his BS & MS in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech with an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill to provide the necessary foundation to build a company that would improve our economy, national defense, and our children’s future by revolutionizing STEM education. This was the genesis of Plasma Games.

Caroline began her career as an entrepreneur and joined JA as a volunteer in Slovakia in the 1990s. She worked to establish JA operations in eight Eastern European countries after the Berlin Wall came down and eventually led the founding of JA Europe in 2002. She is passionate about the impact entrepreneurship education can have on young people, and during her 17 years as CEO at JA Europe, she and her team launched several innovative initiatives such as the Entrepreneurial Skills Pass (a micro-credential for teenagers), the EE-HUB (a policy platform), the Innovation Cluster for Entrepreneurship Education (impact research), and The Entrepreneurial School Awards.

In 2014, she received a Leonardo Award for "Crossing Borders" and was given the Soraya Salti Award by JA Worldwide in 2017 for her achievements in Europe. In 2019, her alma mater, the University of Alberta in Canada, awarded her an Honorary Doctorate.  

Caroline also became the Global Head of Regional Growth and Development for JA Worldwide in 2016 and joined as COO in February 2020. Caroline has spoken at numerous conferences and events, including the World Economic Forum, the OECD, and the Global Education & Skills Forum and is a frequent panelist and moderator.

Caroline is a dual citizen (Canada and Belgium) and is based in Brussels.

On Balance with David Shafer - Shafer serves as Chief Entrepreneur responsible for Cognia’s Trusted Partner Program, along with exploring partnerships and new ways to increase Cognia’s impact. For more than two decades, he has led multiple successful start-ups, including Frontline Education and bringing the Skycam™ aerial robotic broadcast camera system to professional and college sports. Shafer has worked in several markets outside of education that, include broadcast, entertainment, and banking.  He has served terms as an elected school board member in Pennsylvania and currently serves as an Executive Board Member for Millersville University, his undergraduate alma mater, along with advising the Lombardo Business School’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. He has volunteered as an Executive Board Member of the Boy Scouts of America and served on the Executive Board of the YMCA.

Pierre Dubuc is the co-founder and CEO of OpenClassrooms, one of the largest global

education-to-employment platform providers, with 355,000 students across 140 countries,

thousands of full-time diploma students, and hundreds of corporate customers.

OpenClassrooms is a private, B-Corp-certified distance-learning organization registered with

the Board of Education in Paris, France, accredited as a higher education institution by the

French state.

Pierre met Mathieu Nebra, the co-founder of the company, in 2001; both were teenagers then,

curious about coding and computers. In 2013, after years of promoting online education and

several pivots, they created OpenClassrooms, headquartered in Paris, France. They later

founded OpenClassrooms Inc, a registered apprenticeship provider approved by the US DOL

and a postsecondary educational institution.

OpenClassrooms is making education accessible to all by delivering fully online work-based

learning programs and internationally recognized degrees. With a unique approach based on

mastery learning, hands-on projects, and individualized mentoring, the platform promotes

employability for all, specifically in today’s and tomorrow’s most sought-after jobs and

competencies, like tech, data, IT, business, etc.

Among numerous other distinctions, Pierre Dubuc was featured among the “30 under 30” by

Forbes magazine and selected in the 2020 Young Leaders program of the French-American

Foundation.

On Balance with Michael Simpson, the CEO and Co-founder of PAIRIN. Simpson sits down with Berger to discuss his career path, the nuances of data, and making transformational change occur while others sit on the sidelines. Simpson is refreshingly honest about his goals, the challenges of the market, and purpose over-profit approaches.

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with former Arkansas Secretary of Education Johnny Key to discuss his recent career move from the public sector to Strategos Group, which allows him to continue pursuing his passion—finding solutions that create positive education outcomes for kids.

About Johnny:

Johnny Key joined Strategos Group in March 2023. He served as secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education from 2019 to 2023 and as commissioner of the department from 2015 to 2019, overseeing the state’s 237 school districts and 18 charter school systems.

Under Key’s leadership, the department developed a vision to transform Arkansas into a national leader of student-focused education. Arkansas became a national leader in computer science and literacy education.

Johnny was also Vice President for University Relations at the University of Arkansas System from 2014 to 2015. Key also served as a state senator in Arkansas from 2009 to 2014, holding leadership positions, including minority leader and chair of the Senate Education Committee, among others. Johnny was a state representative from 2003 to 2008.

Learn more about Madeleine and The Children's Movement here.

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Dr. Mike Magee, president of Minerva University. 

About Dr. Mike Magee

Dr. Mike Magee is the President of Minerva University. Prior to joining Minerva, he was founding CEO of Chiefs for Change, a non-profit organization supporting leaders of many of the nation’s largest and most innovative K-12 public education systems. Previously, Magee co-founded and was CEO of Rhode Island Mayoral Academies (RIMA). As CEO of RIMA, he built a statewide network of regional, racially and economically diverse public schools while successfully advocating for sweeping changes to state education policy.

Before starting RIMA, Magee taught American literature and philosophy for a decade at Haverford College, Wheaton College, and the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2004, his book, Emancipating Pragmatism, won the Elizabeth Agee Prize in American Studies. He is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow, and for the past several years has moderated seminars for both the Pahara Institute and the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Magee holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s in political science and English from the College of the Holy Cross.

On Balance with Maureen Kelleher & Rebecca Klein discuss their ground-breaking project, Jane Crow: Then and Now. The project explores the role women have played in the very complicated and impactful social structures of education. 

About Anand

Anand Padmanabhan is a global technology leader and a creative, strategic, and entrepreneurial chief information officer. He has led several organizations through digital transformation efforts, conceptualizing strategies and delivering platforms that align technology with academic and business objectives.

Prior to coming to Fordham, he was the founding chief technology and information officer for Whittle School & Studios, a global institution for students ages 3 to 18, where he led an initiative to support a multi-site, multinational K-12 education system in China and the U.S. He has been a CIO at multiple universities around the world, and has led strategies for statewide and university-wide initiatives on various aspects of using technology in teaching and learning, data security, high-performance computing, data analytics, and building student-centered technology ecosystems.

Anand has an M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business, an M.S. in computer engineering from Louisiana State University, and a B.E. in electronics and telecom engineering from Madras University. He has received numerous national and international honors for his work and on behalf of the teams he has led, including two CIO 100 awards (one in the U.S. and one in India), the 2017 Cloud Leadership Award, and Campus Technology’s Innovation in Teaching and Learning award. He has served on multiple boards and has published papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Prior to working at Whittle, he was the senior vice president and chief information officer for the New School (which includes Parsons School of Design). He has also served as the corporate chief information officer for HCL Corporation and for Shiv Nadar Foundation in Delhi, India; as CIO at Everonn Education in Chennai, NYU Stern School of Business, Hunter College of the City University of New York, and Tennessee State University; as executive director of IT for Seton Hill University; and as an educational technologist at NASA Center for Educational Technologies.

On Balance with Ruth Birman of DigitalEd

Director of Product Development and Innovation with six years of experience leading global product teams through digital transformation, design thinking, and product growth. A natural facilitator and technology officer, connecting internal teams, senior stakeholders, and external partners. Cultivating expansion of overall tech strategy and motivating diverse product ideation to launch user-driven products for clients, including government agencies and global brands. Ruth began her career in market research at the age of 15 as an interviewer testing various products, services, and marketing campaigns. Fascinated with telecommunications and technology, she pivoted to customer service at Rogers and after pushing for several process improvements and enhancements for internal software, became a business analyst. This kicked off a career in both business process optimization and user experience design working for clients like TD and RBC as well as projects like Project Literacy and The Giving Tower. From there, she moved into broader product strategy, working on software that solved supply chain issues for some of the world's biggest brands and ultimately building product and design teams.

On Balance with Monica Fagraeus Lundstrom

Boksnok announces rebranding, changes name to Lylli with new visual identity and product updates

The Swedish tech company Lylli, previously known as Boksnok, closed a seed round of 1.2 million Euro earlier this fall. The company now gears up for growth and further expansion, launching a new name and visual identity.  

Lylli is an app for mobile phones and tablets with digital children's books with read-out-loud functionality. Through commercial collaborations with large publishers such as Swedish Bonnier Carlsen and German Verlagsgruppe Oetinger, thousands of titles are available in the Lylli app, which is offered as a subscription service in the Swedish and German speaking markets. Today, several thousands of kids read with Lylli every week, but the ambition is to reach a broader market.

- It was important to involve our users in the process of developing our new brand and truly understand their needs. Our goal is to create a lasting brand that appeals to both parents and children. I’m very proud of the result and that it’s been so well received by our users, says Magdalena Worrman, CMO at Lylli.

The new visual identity has been developed together with the award winning design agency Ehrenstråhle & Wågnert, whose previous clients include iZettle, H&M and Epidemic Sound. The new design is friendly, inspiring and playful, and in addition to a new color palette, typography and other graphic elements - the brand is brought to life with the help of three new characters that represent children of different ages.

In connection to the rebranding, the new Lylli app comes with several product updates.

• Night mode. Many users will be thrilled to learn that you can now turn off the screen and continue to listen to the story with sound only - a highly requested feature to simplify bedtime routines.
• Search & discover. The Search feature has been adapted completely for children and their behavior to make it even easier to discover new books.
• New books. A ton of new content has been added, from bestsellers such as Paw Patrol to local favorites such as Bamse

- We’re happy to be working together with Lylli to secure a strong position for kids’ books in the digital world. With the Lylli app’s new design, the books are placed in an environment that we believe will attract more children and entice an increased interest for reading. We look forward to seeing the Lylli world develop further, says Frida Änges, Business Area Manager at Bonnierförlagen

On Balance with Mikael Larsson

Learnster develops the LMS of tomorrow for growing organizations.

‍Learnster’s cutting-edge technology creates new, efficient ways of sharing information and knowledge with the entire organization. Save valuable time with Learnster’s smart Automation Rules. The revolutionary Knowledge Gap AI pinpoints individual learning priorities.

Learn more about Dr. Logan.

On Balance with Page Keller, Head of Academic Relations at Knack, stops by to talk about the current needs of college students across the country. Prior to Knack, Keller spent over 25 years at the College of Charleston. Keller served as the Director for the Center for Excellence in Education, Director of Peer Education and Student Support Programs, and also Adjunct Faculty and Academic Advisor over the course of her work for the institution. 

In this episode of On Balance, Rod Berger sat down with entrepreneur Samyr Qureshi, co-founder and CEO of Knack, an innovative online tutoring platform that matches college students with tutors in relevant subjects. They discuss the evolution of flexible learning and how higher education is experiencing a shift toward a more individualized approach to students’ learning needs.

Samyr struggled in school. As a 7-year-old immigrant from the United Arab Emirates, he had to adapt to a new culture and integrate into a foreign school system. Samyr attributes his will to persevere to the one-on-one help he received from his first tutor—his mother.

Learn more about Aline here!

Learn more about DigitalEd!

Learn more about the Band of Sisters!

Learn more about imagi!

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with journalist Matt Barnum who is a reporter for Chalkbeat, a great resource for educators. Matt has extensively covers education, and he notably reported on learning loss in his article “The state of learning loss: 7 takeaways from the latest data.”

Matt breaks down the latest statistical information on the pandemic learning gap resulting from interruptions in classroom instruction. Learn more about Matt and read more of his work here.

Dr. Solderholm has always had a passion for students learning more than the content in their expressed courses. He believes the courses and programs offered to students should act in concert with each other to produce well-rounded citizens. Learn more about Dr. Soderholm and Culpeper County Public Schools. 

Learn more about Cornerstone!

In this On Balance episode, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Joshua Broggi, founder and CEO of Woolf. Woolf is the first global, collegiate higher education institution that lets qualified organizations join as accredited member colleges. Woolf's software platform helps organizations meet and maintain regulatory and institutional standards by handling everything from course creation to degree issuance. Collegiate universities are not new: the University of Oxford, University of California, University of London, and Delhi University are all collegiate. Woolf is the first global, collegiate higher education institution allowing membership for qualified new colleges.

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Kenisha Arora who studies Medical Sciences at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. She is a UNESCO Youth Representative and spoke at the Transforming Education Pre-Summit in Paris. Kenisha also received the prestigious Princess Diana Award and was the only Canadian recipient of the Chegg Global Student Prize in 2022. Kenisha and her sister co-founded The HopeSisters, an organization with the purpose of bringing hope to senior citizens experiencing social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more about BD here!

This episode is sponsored by Just Right Reader.

Learn more about ELVTR here!

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Marcus Kennedy, General Manager of Intel Corporation’s Gaming Division.

Intel’s mission is to shape the future of technology to help create a better future for the entire world. By pushing forward in fields like AI, analytics and cloud-to-edge technology, Intel’s work is at the heart of countless innovations. From major breakthroughs like self-driving cars and rebuilding the coral reefs to things that make everyday life better like blockbuster effects and improved shopping experiences — they’re all powered by Intel technology.

Learn more about Intel!

Novel Effect is an app that uses voice recognition to follow along with interactive music, sound effects, and character voices (i.e., “soundscape”) as you read aloud from your favorite children’s books. Parents, kids, and teachers call it “magical." Parents Melissa and Matt Hammersley came up with the idea for Novel Effect after Matt watched his friend read aloud with a young child while adding her own silly voices and sound effects. The child laughed and begged to read more books. It was magical and stuck with them.

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Dr. Rufus Tony Spann, a renowned counselor, educator and thought-leader passionate about shifting culture of mental health and wellness by promoting inclusivity for all people.

As Executive Director of Mental Health at TimelyMD, he oversees a national network of licensed providers trusted to provide virtual therapeutic counseling, in-the-moment behavioral health support, health coaching and crisis intervention services to college and university students.

The founding member and former Chief Clinical Officer of Hurdle, a digital health platform for people of color, Dr. Spann brings extensive experience in creating equity within mental health and reducing barriers to access to increase preventative wellness for all. He has honed his expertise at the intersection of mental health and higher education over the last decade, and continues to teach at the University of Southern California and serve on the Forbes Health Advisory Board.

Learn more about TimelyMD here!

Dr. Rod Berger sat down with, Julia Rafal-Baer, Ph.D., the managing partner of ILO Group. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Rafal-Baer played an instrumental role advising school district and state education agency leaders across the U.S. and led a nationwide effort to safely reopen schools, accelerate learning, and strengthen critical supports for students. She serves as an expert advisor to the COVID Collaborative.

Prior to founding ILO Group, Dr. Rafal-Baer served as the chief operating officer at Chiefs for Change, a nationwide network of district and state education leaders, where she helped transform the organization from a small start-up to an $11M high-impact national nonprofit. She coached and mentored more than 50 leaders through the Future Chiefs program at Chiefs for Change, half of whom went on to become superintendents and commissioners. Dr. Rafal-Baer previously served as assistant commissioner of the New York State Education Department. In 2020, she was appointed by the U.S. secretary of education to a four-year term on the National Assessment Governing Board.

Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Anurupa Ganguly, the founder and CEO of Prisms of Reality. She created Prisms to level the playing field for all students in mathematics and the physical sciences. Prisms, is building a spatial learning platform that rapidly improves student engagement & performance in Math. Prisms does this by immersing students in compelling real-world problems that foster kinesthetic sense-making, student intuition, and deeper connections between physical and abstract representations.

Learn more about Prisms here! 

In this episode of On Balance, Dr. Rod Berger sat down with Hardeep Gulati, CEO of PowerSchool, the leading provider of K-12 software and cloud-based solutions to improve educational outcomes and simplify school operations. PowerSchool supports more than 45 million students in more than 90 countries and reaches 75% of students in North America. Rod and Hardeep discussed all things education in 2022 and beyond, along with tidbits about dinner-time conversations and the role education plays in family discussions.

Learn more about the Center for Inclusive Innovation here!