EDTECH ACTION
Deep in the heart of EdTech
From idea to acceleration, we help you find success in the education marketplace
We understand the business of education!
These companies have joined our Incubator/Accelerator program:
Through our Initiate and Implement services, we help EdTech companies acquire customers, understand the education marketplace, and manage growth in the EdTech industry.
CEO & Co-founder, EdTech Action
Scott has long been an innovator on the forefront of technology integration in education. Scott is co-founder and CEO of EdTech Action. As an EdTech ambassador, Scott utilizes his unique blend of expertise and awareness of technology and education to work with educators, entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and EdTech companies, bringing the community together to foster transformative change in education. He brings over 20 years of experience in education as a high school principal, district administrator, teacher, and entrepreneur. Scott also serves as the Director for Globaloria, a K-12 blended-learning platform where students learn computer science and coding through video game design.
COO & Co-founder, EdTech Action
Sean Duffy is an educator and EdTech leader who is passionate about helping to make meaningful change in education through technology. In addition to his work with EdTech Action, Sean is also the founder of EdTech Austin and the lead Organizer for Startup Weekend Education - Austin. Currently, Sean is an Assessment Specialist and Startup Mentor/Advisor for Pearson Catalyst for Education.
Co-Founder, EdTech Action
Stephanie Cerda has experience teaching multiple content areas from kindergarten to early college. She recently received a M.Ed from the University of Texas in Educational Administration. Stephanie plans to continue her work to thoughtfully implement and integrate technology into curriculum while striving for equity and successful learning outcomes for all students in her current position as an Innovative Teaching Strategist for Manor ISD.
Her work and interests concentrate on transforming traditional public school structures with a deliberate focus on innovation, excellence, equity, and justice.
Cambium Learning Group
Practice Director, Bridge Partners Consulting
CEO & Founder, Double Line Partners
CEO, Civitas Learning
CEO, SmithCo Investments
Recruited to lead technology-informed investment strategy for well-capitalized Austin firm SmithCo Investment. CTO at Snag-a-job and Intralinks. More than 16 years of C-suite experience growing businesses from inception to greater than $150 million in revenue. General Management: Employs a unique mix of entrepreneurial thinking, technology, and business acumen. Earned a Wharton MBA. P&L Experience: Direct P&L experience for business lines up to $14 million in revenue. Exceeded growth expectations and improved operating margins. Entrepreneurship: Both as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur, has successfully identified market opportunities, validated with customers, and built winning products and businesses. Technology: Deep background in technology and product development for B2B and B2C; built and motivated teams and established product management, UX, dev, architecture, and QC functions. Team Building and Development: Known for fostering a collaborative, team-oriented environment, driving results and growth; consistently builds cohesive, high-performance teams.
Executive Director, EGBI
Al Lopez is currently the Executive Director of EGBI. Prior to joining EGBI, Lopez was a finance executive at Dell, Inc. for 11 years, most recently serving as vice president of finance for Dell’s Global Services & IT organization. Previously he spent 21 years at IBM in a host of financial management and executive positions, including two years overseas in France, after starting his career as a sales representative.
In addition to his extensive executive corporate background, Lopez has a strong history of community outreach. He serves as vice president of the St. John Neighborhood Association and chairs the Austin Achievement Zone board of directors, as well as working as a member of the Austin Community Housing Development (CHDO) Roundtable and the For The City Network.
Lopez holds a bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the University of Arizona and an MBA from the University of Northern Colorado. He also served on the University of Texas at Austin Accounting Advisory Council for several years. He and his wife Judy are active at the Austin Stone Community Church. They have three married children.
CEO, Wayside Schools
Executive Director, IDEA Public Schools
Director of EdTech, Teach for America
Executive Producer, SXSWedu
Ron is an independent sales and marketing consultant in K-12 publishing and Executive Producer of SXSWedu, has been involved in educational publishing and technology since graduating from the University of Texas. He helped launch Optical Data Corporation in the mid-80's and was responsible for pioneering the first state-adopted technology program to access traditional textbook funding in Texas and other bell weather states.
Ron subsequently joined Publisher's Resource Group (PRG), an Austin-based curriculum development company creating print and electronic materials for instructional content providers, ultimately serving as Vice President and General Manager. In 2006, he established R L Reed Consulting, an independent consulting firm specializing in strategic K-12 sales and marketing. In that role, he produced several educational panels at South by Southwest Interactive, focusing on digital instructional content and open education resources.
The experience led him to launch SXSWedu in 2011. The SXSWedu Conference & Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders across a variety of backgrounds in education. The four-day event affords registrants open access to engaging sessions, interactive workshops, hands on learning experiences, film screenings, early stage edtech startups and a host of networking opportunities. By providing a platform for collaboration, SXSWedu works to promote creativity and social impact.
CEO, Make-A-Wish Foundation
Kathrin has over 30 years of executive management experience and an excellent track record across a diverse set of business environments, including start-up, rapid growth, turnaround, consolidating, non-profit, and traditional businesses, as well as traditional and charter public schools. Her background includes serving as a CEO, president and superintendent, public and private organization board member, and a proven top-operating executive in organizations ranging from $1 million to $2 billion in revenue. Kathrin has earned the reputation of being a talented leader in organizations undergoing dramatic change as she strives to create a work atmosphere in which open communications, a sense of urgency, and rapid execution of well understood plans lead to bottom-line, measurable success. Kathrin especially loves building innovative, engaged, results-oriented teams through leadership, effective hiring and organization development.
She is talented in securing the loyalty of clients, sponsors, and strategic partners through a client-centric focus. She has always been active in the community and has served on numerous philanthropic boards. Highly adaptable and innovative; she disrupts stagnant growth and outcomes by intuiting possibilities that are generally invisible and unrealized, organizing people and resources into highly efficient systems for immediate impact. She is able to efficiently coalesce specific, actionable information that guides strategic vision with detailed validation.
Consultant, JJ Powers & Associates
A long-time Austinite and University of Texas graduate, Allyson Peerman is an accomplished public affairs executive with extensive experience in leading government relations, community relations and corporate social responsibility programs at the local and global levels for Fortune 500 companies. Allyson spent over 20 years with AMD, an international Fortune 500 semiconductor company with annual revenue over $6.5 billion. She was the company’s vice president for global public affairs, and founder and president of its AMD Foundation, promoting investment in science and mathematics education across the globe. Mrs. Peerman is an active member of the Austin community, where she serves on the executive committee for the Austin Area Research Organization; on the board of directors for KLRU/PBS TV; and on the University of Texas College of Education Foundation Advisory Board. Allyson has been honored with the Sam Walton Business Leader Award for her various education initiatives, and was named a “Profiles in Power” winner by the Austin Business Journal. She has also been recognized as a Woman of Distinction by the Lone Star Girl Scouts Council, and received the Confidence Award from First Tee of Austin.
Allyson has a proven ability to assemble and lead diverse teams on a wide variety of community initiatives. She has extensive management and strategic planning experience within both corporate and non-profit organizations. Allyson is committed to helping businesses and organizations grow their community presence through expanding their stakeholder relations, finding their philanthropic “sweet spot” and raising their profile locally, nationally and globally.
Vice-President, National Instruments
27 Years at National Instruments, 15 as VP of Product and Corporate Marketing. Ray ran education business at NI--$140M, about 12% of NI revenue. He sold products to science and engineering classes and departments in high school and university and developed strong partnerships with LEGO (LEGO Mindstorms), US FIRST, Project Lead the Way, Educate Texas, and UTeach. He acquired 5 companies in the STEM education market and created a small education publishing company, NTS Press. He was board member for Quanser in Markham, Canadaand served on several advisory boards, UT Electrical and Computer Engineering, UT College of Natural Science, SMU School of Engineering, Tufts Center for Engineering and Education Outreach, FIRST Executive Advisory Board. Frequent speaker at STEM Education conferences, most recently US News and World Report and US News STEM Solutions Conference.
Double Line Partners
Milan is helping state education organizations and vendors integrate into the next generation of REST API services (based on the Ed-Fi data standard) that are changing the way we look at education technology. He's Tech Lead of a development team consisting of 2 to 7 developers depending on flux with skills primarily based in .NET and SSIS. He leads the design and implementation of features onto the Ed-Fi Dashboards that were customized for the Arkansas Department of Education. Hands on with NET and ETL development and took part in peer code reviews and automated testing to ensure quality. Also, Milan interfaced directly with the ADE to understand needs and manage client expectations.
Director of PD, Pro-Computing
Tracy designs innovative learning opportunities for educators, administrators, and students. As the Director of Professional Learning Initiatives, she strives to push against the status quo and partner with district leaders to redefine what on-going learning looks like for modern educators. She is currently interested in experimenting with a blend of challenge and inquiry based approaches with technology playing an enhancing or transformative role in the construction of learning.
As an “eduprenuer", Tracy creates technology tools that encourage metacognition, visible thinking, and put student needs first. Her experience, serving as a bilingual teacher in Texas and Mexico, and her work with children with special needs, deeply impacts how she sees challenges in education. She shares her vision and creativity through writing, presenting, and learning alongside educators. She plans to work the rest of her career solving interesting problems in the edtech space and raising up leaders and innovators who are in it for the kids.
Tracy received her Masters in Early Childhood with a focus on children with special needs. She is co-founder and lead organizer of EdTechWomen Austin.
Founder, Socratic Ventures
"I'm a reformed private equity guy who found a calling building education businesses. I founded Socratic Ventures in 2010 to find bona fide entrepreneurs and to help them foster big ideas in education. Real change in education will only come if we can build lasting businesses that provide fundamental value to the student. Socratic now has a modest private equity fund focused on furthering the same approach that has helped it to launch UniversityNow, TeachTown, Collegiate Gateways, Synergis Education, Student Loan Benefits and MeasureOne. My experience includes a broad background in education operations as well as both generalist and education-focused private equity investing. Prior to founding Socratic Ventures, I was an Associate with Cotton Creek Capital, a private equity firm in Dallas focused on lower middle market transactions. Previously, I spent two years at Edison Schools in charter school relationship management, as well as managing several new product development initiatives. I began my career with Salomon Smith Barney in investment banking and later joined The Riverside Company in their New York office, where I worked with a generalist team focused on lower middle market private equity investments."
Co-founder, Promptivate
"I empower people. I empower them to leverage technology, processes, and individual skills toward innovation of great products.
With extensive product development and cross-business experience, I help technology companies build profitable products. I am in my element where client requirements, technology, marketing-analytics, and a team come together. I love to brainstorm visionary ideas, translate concepts into clear visions, translate visions into actionable steps, identify ways to measure success, and orchestrate resources into recurring revenue streams. Some would say this is what makes a great product manager. To me, it defines a "linchpin" for an organization I can stand behind.
Product management is at the core of most of my roles. I can wear many hats. As an entrepreneur for a large part of my career, I can focus or shift gears when appropriate. I have gears for staff empowerment, leadership, marketing, data analytics, web development, database design, finance, legal, customer support, and sales. Specialties: Staff development / empowerment; Wearing multiple hats (and translating different stakeholders); Designing / implementing efficient systems. Skills: Javascript, jQuery, C#, VB, .Net, ASP.NET, mobile, Web services, HTML5, SQL, Database design & optimization, Agile & Scrum development processes, API development, interfaces with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, ODBC. I was intimately involved in all aspects of business "on my own nickel". I learned how to balance numerous factors to produce effective outcomes on limited budgets. I'm willing to take educated risks toward intimidating goals. Some of the risks paid off and others... still paid off with valuable "learning experiences". I want to share my experiences. I love to see others run with their passions by leading through coaching. The trick is finding a group of diverse people, who if properly empowered, will run in the same direction... and accomplish great things. I can make that happen."
Attorney, Miller, Egan, Molter, & Nelson LLP
"Startup, Venture Capital, and M&A Attorney in Austin. My practice focuses on representing emerging growth companies in connection with corporate governance matters, angel and venture capital financings, and other corporate and commercial transactions; securities law reporting and compliance matters; and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining the firm, Brian was an Associate in the Austin Technology and Emerging Companies group of Andrews Kurth LLP and an Associate in the New York Corporate group of Kirkland & Ellis LLP."
Executive Director, ImpactLabs
Entrepreneur. Educator. Advisor.
Twenty years' experience innovating in K-12 education and technology. Track record of building successful enterprises and programs from the ground up. In business: significant experience in bootstrapping startups, selling to K-12, developing strategic partnerships, C-level relationship management, (SaaS) product development and product design, public speaking, streamlining operations. In K-12: significant experience in 1:1 learning environments, staff development, inquiry-based learning, curriculum development, history and writing instruction and teacher evaluation. Key Interests: equity in K-12 education; advising K-12 edtech startups; school/program design; personalized learning & competency-based education; removing barriers to innovation in K-12 through advocacy and collaboration.
Vice-President, Learning List
Strategic Startup Advisor, Investor & Industry Analyst for Mobile/Edtech trends and culture.
20+ years of achieving Go-To-Market success in the wireless/telecom, IT and consumer electronics and SaaS industries in the Americas, Asia Pacific and EMEA regions. Launched new technologies/products with guerrilla marketing promotion strategies which yielded strong revenue growth and mass market consumer adoption with quantifiable ROI. Streamlined product management life cycle processes to reduce time-to-market, lower costs, increase profitability and capture significant mind share and market share.Effectively evangelized products/technologies as a speaker at global conferences such as the Consumer Electronics Show, Mobile World Congress and SXSW Interactive. BSEE, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Specialties: Strategic Advisor for mobile/wireless/edtech industry Startups, Mobile/Edtech Industry Analyst, U.S./Americas Go-To-Market Strategies, International Business, Channel Sales/Marketing, Alliances/Partnerships, Multicultural Marketing, New Product Launches and PR campaigns.
CEO & Founder, CemUP
Founder & Entrepreneur CIO. Solutions Architect & Social Marketing Strategist. Mobile social media commerce developer, strategist overseeing product design, marketing and PR SMMS. I truly enjoy producing simple and elegant solutions for complex problems.
Mobile & Product Designer. Strategist and analyst in mobile innovation, wearables development & collaboration of enterprise social media commerce and enterprise content.
Corporate social media strategist, enterprise media data storage with an in-depth experience in wearable and sport marketing, project managements. Converting content into engaging social medium, across social community platforms. Developer mobile m-commerce, photo sharing, digital rights management (DRM), shopping cart, web-design and wearable.
"In the past 14 years, I have Co/Developed and have published over 12 products! I have won the Tech Titan Award, a Webby Award. Interactive 500 placed 149 and been named to the D&B Top 3%. Named to the prestigious list of the Caruth Entrepreneurship SMU. Most recently I was a top 10 semifinalist in Innovate!100, an award given to the most promising tech startups worldwide. Named as a Top 10 Austin Mobile Startup of 2010, SXSW 2011 Our team was the winner of the ebay PayPal X commerce Startup Accelerator at SXSW 2011, first and second. Presenter at Google I/O 2011. Presenter at Mobile Monday wearables 2010 & 2011. Presenter 2014 SXSW international accelerator pro-sport IOT and IOE. 2014 Winner of AT&T and IEEE Computer Society Drone Challenge Mobile App Hackathon (Wearables)."
Specialties: Social distribution (B2B B2C SMMS ). Product design, marketing SMMS , PaaS & SaaS in cloud. Tech assessments. Mobile strategist, media commerce IOT and IOE . Photo & Video, Game, Software, Pharma, Health, Energy. Backup cloud, Data profiling, Peer-to-Peer ,NFC Archiving. Storage System, MAM, DAM, CMS, KM, Data Mining, Mobile, iPhone & iPad SDK, Android, Nokia, PHP, MySQL, iOS, Java, Linux, HTML5, Social API.
We help build great EdTech companies by providing a steady launch runway for startups through our partnerships and strategic alliances.
EdTech Action @Capital Factory helps grow great EdTech companies to the next level.
We help EdTech companies with customer acquisition, advisement in the education marketplace, and managing growth in the edtech industry.
