Innovation & Entrepreneurship

At Education Pioneers we invest in leaders because they embody our organization’s founding belief that talented leaders and managers can scale successful solutions for the education sector to impact millions of children nationwide. For Women’s History Month, we celebrate EP Alumni who are trailblazers in education – with a focus on Alumni who are entrepreneurs and/or pioneers. These are only a few of the inspirational women who have been a part of our program. Check out more of our EP Alums on our Meet Our Pioneers page. Brenda Darden Wilkerson (2015) CEO and President, AnitaB.org From...

One of Education Pioneers’ long-standing partner organizations is Bellwether Education Partners . Bellwether, a nonprofit that helps education organizations become more effective in their work with underserved students, also supports entrepreneurs who see gaps in the field and have ideas on how to address them. Bellwether offers entrepreneurs hands-on, high-touch support to help them translate their vision into activities, staff, resources, and financial models. In this post, Bellwether Co-Founder and Managing Partner Mary Wells shares must-read advice for education entrepreneurs getting...

Education Pioneers’ National Conference Speaker Q&A with Hassan Hassan, Director of Investments, 4.0 Schools Hassan Hassan believes that luck has played a huge role in his success as a college graduate, private-sector engineer, and now director of investments for 4.0 Schools, a nonprofit incubator for education entrepreneurs. He also believes he can help make success for all students less about luck and more about design. To help early stage entrepreneurs who have ideas on how to improve schools, Hassan will run two interactive workshops at the #EP2016 National Conference titled “What Is...

Decades-long work to transform U.S. public education has had its share of failures, stumbles, and pivots. It has also had many successes. Education Pioneers Alum Jason Weeby, Senior Fellow at Bellwether Education Partners, reflects on some of those wins and losses. He also talks with EP about why having the courage to innovate, face necessary failures on the road to success, and persevere in work to disrupt the status quo will ultimately transform education for the better—especially if we remain reflective and always maintain a large helping of empathy. 1. You’re speaking on a panel at the #...

At EP, we’re always impressed by our Pioneers. The work they do, their commitment and dedication to changing outcomes for underserved students—that’s the stuff that keeps us at EP doing the work we do to help support and grow their careers.

About a week ago, a handful of Education Pioneers Fellows and Alumni had the opportunity to participate in an “Agents of Change” dinner in New York’s Financial District. At these annual local events, Education Pioneers brings together leaders from across education organizations to share their perspectives, insights, and experiences from their work in the field. As an EP Fellow and someone who is relatively new to education, I appreciated the opportunity to learn from seasoned change-catalysts about what helped them excel. Four must-knows I learned about entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship.

Technology holds tremendous potential to engage students in the classroom, ignite their curiosity, and connect their outside-of-school experiences with those at their desks.

Educating every single child in our country exceptionally well shouldn’t be a radical idea. But to realize success for all students, we must upend an educational system that currently provides the most opportunity to those who need it the least, and gives the least opportunity to those who need it the most.

In Memphis, Tennessee, many education leaders are thinking big about change for our communities. These are full-blown visions of “cradle to career” improvement and success for all of our cities’ young people. As a result, Memphis is on the cusp of an education renaissance like never before.

Empower Schools and EP Alumna Sarah Toce are working to make the debate over school district vs. charter school a thing of the past. “Our theory of action represents a third way,” said Sarah, Director of Policy for Empower.