Neeru Khosla at TEDxNYED in 2010: co-founder of the non-profit CK-12 Foundation.
Founder-leader name, title & photograph: Neeru Khosla, co-founder and chair of the non-profit CK-12 Foundation
Venture name: CK-12 Foundation
Single paragraph description of the venture, its primary products or services, and its original value proposition: The CK-12 Foundation is a non-profit which aims to increase access to low low-cost, open and customizable K-12 education resources in the US and beyond. Its primary products are known as “Flexbooks”, which are customizable resources conceptually organized like texbooks, but with embedded multimedia content (videos, simulations, games etc.) that students can explore to learn concepts in the style that suits them best. What I find to be personally most notable is the inclusion of AI into “Adaptive Practice” assessments, which strive to differentiate problem difficulty to match individual student performance. The original value proposition is that all resources are open under a creative commons licence, and both educators and students can create custom Flexbooks that suit their curriculum for free, which dramatically lowers the cost of educational resources when compared to print textbooks, and those Flexbooks are nevertheless authored by experts in their respective fields.
Short bio of the founder-leader focusing on a critical analysis of their background, skills and motivation relative to the prospective and prescribed attributes of successful entrepreneurs. Comment also on the apparent quality of their team, and their board and advisors. Remember that these are real people and your analysis will be visible online, so be professional: Neeru Khosla grew up in India and England. She pursued studies in Microbiology and earned in master’s degree in molecular biology from San Jose State University after moving to America with her husband and childhood boyfriend Vinod Khosla (the co-founder of Sun Microsystems) in 1980. She would continue her work in molecular biology studying gene expression a Stanford University, where she would later obtain a master’s degree in education. She has also been appointed to the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory board and she’s been on the board of other organizations such as the American Indian Foundation and DonorsChoose. Neeru is obviously incredibly driven both in her studies and her professional work guiding CK-12, and I have actually had the privilege to meet her during a virtual conference of CK-12 educators where she sought out direct user feedback to enhance the CK-12 platform. Neeru has also sought out an extensive team of over 50 data scientists, programmers, and educators who continue to enhance CK-12 offerings with over 5000 individual resources organized by concept to enhance their K-12 education offerings. Perhaps most importantly, Neeru has surrounded herself with experts in various fields to help her realize her vision of a quality open-source educational platform, and I can personally attest that the original value of lowering the cost of education while differentiating learning to suit each student’s needs is authentic and it has completely changed how I teach.
Wow-it’s really cool that you actually met her, Brendan, she sounds like an amazing person. I have to admit that as I was looking through ideas for technologies there was a lot of interesting stuff, but most of it was out of reach for your average K-12 teachers due to cost. The dream with most technologies is that the schoolboards will be able to afford to buy them and share with schools- but this venture actually is a product where the purpose is to be a free resource right from the start (and not a crappy free version of the paid version either!)
Wow-it’s really cool that you actually met her, Brendan, she sounds like an amazing person. I have to admit that as I was looking through ideas for technologies there was a lot of interesting stuff, but most of it was out of reach for your average K-12 teachers due to cost. The dream with most technologies is that the schoolboards will be able to afford to buy them and share with schools- but this venture actually is a product where the purpose is to be a free resource right from the start (and not a crappy free version of the paid version either!)