DreamBox Learning team

DreamBox Learning’s team brings an unprecedented combination of experiences. We’re entrepreneurs, educators, creative designers, and technologists. We’ve built successful companies from the ground up, developed world-class software products, taught in the classroom, published research on education, and produced award-winning children’s entertainment products and services. We’re also passionate parents who want to provide our children — and all children — with the very best educational and enrichment opportunities!

Management

Jessie Woolley-Wilson
CEO & President

Jessie brings nearly two decades of experience in K-12 eLearning and education technology to DreamBox Learning. Throughout her career in the education industry, Jessie has held several leadership roles in general management, sales & marketing, operations and business development. Most recently, Jessie served as President of K12 & K-20 Strategy at Blackboard where she led Blackboard’s growth and development strategy for the K12 group. Prior to joining Blackboard, she served as President of LeapFrog SchoolHouse, the schools division of LeapFrog Enterprises, where she was instrumental in establishing SchoolHouse as a leader in education technology and one of the fastest growing educational software producers in the U.S.

Jessie has also held leadership positions at collegeboard.com, the interactive division of The College Board; MyRoad.com, an e-learning company that helped middle school, high school, and college students prepare for college and careers; and Kaplan, the leading test preparation company in the US.

Jessie received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA in English from The University of Virginia. She is a 2007 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and serves on several boards of non-profit organizations, including the National Education Association Foundation, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the Ron Brown Scholars Program, and Editorial Projects in Education Inc. (EPE), which publishes Education Week. Jessie has also served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Technology and Education, an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Sarah Daniels
Vice-President of Marketing & Sales

Sarah has over 18 years of experience as a senior executive at successful start-ups, leading marketing, product management, and sales teams. She spent 7 years as VP of Marketing and Product Management at Aventail Corporation, a provider of award-winning SSL VPN solutions for secure remote access. Sarah also co-founded Scriptics Corporation, where she raised VC funds, led the creation of a popular web portal, and created an innovative online revenue stream. The company was later acquired by Interwoven. Prior to Scriptics, Sarah also co-founded Presidio Systems, a VC-funded provider of data collection software to help shorten pharmaceutical development time, and sold it after 5+ years of growth. Sarah also spent 3 years at the strategy management consulting firm Corporate Decisions Inc.

Sarah earned her B.S. degree in Mathematics from Yale University, and her M.B.A. degree from Stanford University, where she was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Daniel Kerns
Vice-President of Product Development

Dan has over 20 years of software development experience. Previously, Dan was VP of Engineering for Pure Networks, where he was instrumental in identifying, securing and delivering their flagship AOL business. Dan was also Director of Engineering for VMware, and has consulted for a number of large clients through his firm Sand Point Engineering. He was also an Entrepreneur in Residence at Ignition Partners. Earlier in his career, Dan spent 9 years in a variety of roles at Pure/PureAtria/Rational Software, where he was the Chief Engineer on the Purify product for UNIX and Windows NT platforms and had significant experience managing interactions with strategic partners. Before Pure Software, Dan spent 5 years at Multiflow Computer and Data General Corporation, where he worked on microcode for computers including the DG MV/20000.

Dan earned his Bachelor of Technology in System Software in the School of Computer Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, and certificates in management and finance from Stanford University.

Mickelle Weary
Director of Instructional Design

Mickelle is a National Board Certified teacher with 9 years of experience teaching in Grades K - 6 in public and private schools on both the east and west coasts and in Europe. While a lead teacher in Virginia, Mickelle wrote curriculum that met local and statewide standards using History Alive strategies and Understanding by Design Methodology. She co-wrote a Map Skills WebQuest using primary resources and a grant from the Library of Congress, and developed two courses using BlackBoard. Mickelle has successfully taught elementary school math using a wide variety of textbooks, curriculum, and software-based tools.

Mickelle earned a B.A. in English from the University of Washington and a M.Ed. in Elementary Education from Boston College. After 5 years of teaching, Mickelle earned National Board Certification as a Middle Childhood Generalist. She also holds a Washington State Professional Teaching Certificate.

Board of Directors

Reed Hastings
Chairman
Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Netflix

Reed co-founded Netflix in 1997 and led the successful growth of the company to over 10 million subscribers. Reed is an active educational philanthropist and board member of many non-profits. He was President of the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He has led successful statewide political campaigns for more charter public schools and easier passage of local school bonds. In addition, Reed is a founding member of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools, Pacific Collegiate School, and EdVoice.net.

In March 2010, Barron’s included Reed among its 30 most respected CEOs of the year. Reed is also on the board of directors of Microsoft. Earlier in his career, Reed founded Pure Software, which he built into one of the world’s 50 largest public software companies.

Reed received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS degree from Stanford University in 1988. He holds several patents. Between Bowdoin and Stanford, Reed served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland.

Kevin Hall
CEO and President, Charter School Growth Fund

Kevin has been CEO and President of Charter School Growth Fund since 2009. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer of the Broad Foundation. Kevin is also a co-founder and former senior vice president of business development of Chancellor Beacon Academies, which manages public charter and private schools across the United States.

Earlier in his career, Kevin served as senior vice president of infoUSA, a publicly traded information services company, as well as held positions at McKinsey & Co., Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Teach For America. He has served as an elementary school teacher and as a teaching fellow at Harvard University.

Kevin received a bachelor’s degree with honors in political science and economics from Swarthmore College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

John Danner
Co-Founder and CEO, Rocketship Education

John co-founded Rocketship Education in 2006 as a national network to eliminate the elementary-age achievement gap in high poverty neighborhoods. Before starting Rocketship, John served as a teacher in the Nashville public school system for three years. He co-founded Sacred Heart Nativity School, a private Catholic middle school for at-risk Latino boys in San Jose. John previously served as the Chairman of the Charter School Resource Center of Tennessee, and assisted with the establishment of 12 charter schools in Tennessee. He also served as a founding director of KIPP Academy Nashville, a charter middle school in Nashville.

Prior to his work in education, John founded and served as CEO of NetGravity, an Internet advertising software company. John took NetGravity public and sold the company to Doubleclick in 1999.

John holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a Master’s Degree in Education Policy from Vanderbilt University. John is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Advisory Board

Dr. John Bransford
University of Washington, Professor

Dr. Bransford is the James W. Mifflin University Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Washington. Author of seven books and hundreds of articles and presentations, Bransford is an internationally renowned scholar in cognition and technology. He is also principal investigator and director of the LIFE Center, a recently funded National Science Foundation Sciences of Learning Center at the UW.

The LIFE Center, which stands for Learning in Informal and Formal Environments, works to develop an integrated understanding of how people learn. Previously, Dr. Bransford was the Centennial Professor of Psychology and Education and co-director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Bransford and his colleagues have won numerous awards; several of his published articles, co-authored with colleagues, have won article-of-the-year awards in the areas of science education, technology, design, and theories of transfer.

Dr. Bransford received the Sutherland Prize for Research at Vanderbilt; has been elected to the National Academy of Education; and was awarded the Thorndike Award for 2001 from the Educational Psychology division of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Bransford also served as co-chair of several National Academy of Sciences’ committees that wrote How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom, (2005), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (1999, 2000), and How People Learn, Bridging Research and Practice (1999).

Trish Millines Dziko
Technology Access Foundation, Founder & ED

Trish is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Technology Access Foundation (TAF), which she co-founded in 1996 after a 15 year career in the high tech industry — including over 8 years at Microsoft — as a software tester and developer, a manager, a consultant, and a database designer in such industries as military weapons, business systems, communications, and medical equipment.

TAF’s vision is to make education a priority in underserved communities of color. Serving one child at a time, TAF enhances their educational and professional prospects through the delivery of tools for learning in the 21st century. TAF programs are rooted in project based learning, and are designed to increase problem solving, critical thinking, information synthesis, and communication skills.

In addition to her work at TAF, Trish has served on numerous boards of organizations that focus on children and education. Trish has received dozens of local and national awards for her work educating children of color.

A native of New Jersey, Trish attended Monmouth University and received a B.S. in Computer Science in 1979. Trish received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Seattle University in 2001.

Dr. Francis (Skip) Fennell
Professor of Education, McDaniel College
Past President, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Dr. Francis (Skip) Fennell is Professor of Education at McDaniel College, and is widely published with research, articles and textbooks related to elementary and middle-grade mathematics education. He is one of the writers of the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) and of the Curriculum Focal Points for PreK-8 (NCTM, 2006). Dr. Fennell was also a member of the National Math Advisory Panel, appointed by President Bush. He currently directs the Elementary Mathematics Specialists and Teacher Leaders Project supported by the Brookhill Foundation and the Cisco Learning Institute.

Dr. Fennell has experience as a classroom teacher, a principal, and a supervisor of instruction. The immediate Past-President of NCTM, he has also served as a member of their Board of Directors, as President of the Research Council for Mathematics Learning and President of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE). Dr. Fennell has received numerous honors and awards, including Maryland’s Outstanding Mathematics Educator, McDaniel College’s Professor of the Year, the CASE - Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year for the state of Maryland, and the Glenn Gilbert Award for Leadership from the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM). He has also has been the principal investigator on grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, and the ExxonMobil Foundation. He is an author for Scott Foresman - Addison Wesley enVisionMATH ©2009.

Dr. Catherine Twomey Fosnot
Professor of Childhood Education at the City College of New York
Director of Mathematics in the City

Dr. Fosnot is Professor of Childhood Education at the City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the Founding Director of Mathematics in the City (www.mitcccny.org), an internationally recognized center for professional development located at CCNY and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Fosnot is a well-known author and speaker on mathematics education, and has most recently authored the Contexts for Learning Mathematics series (K-6) and the Young Mathematicians at Work series (Pk-8) with the accompanying professional development materials funded by the National Science Foundation. Two of her books were awarded the “significant contribution” award from the American Educational Research Association and in 2005 she was the recipient of the Teacher of the Year award from CCNY. Early in her career she received the Young Scholar Award from the Association for Educational Communication and Technology for her writing on the topic of technology and learning.

Dr. Margaret Jorgensen
Harcourt Assessment (retired), SVP

Dr. Margaret Jorgensen, former Senior Vice President for Product Research and Innovation at Harcourt Assessment, is a leading authority on assessment for K-12 education. She is also on the Board of the Association of Test Publishers. Dr. Jorgensen earned her Ph.D. in Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistical Analysis from the University of Chicago and holds a Masters of Science in School Psychology. She is the author of two books on innovative assessment and has developed hundreds of criterion-referenced, standards-based, and norm-referenced tests for K-12.

At Harcourt, Dr. Jorgensen was responsible for the innovative 10th edition of the Stanford Achievement Test — the first norm-referenced test with full color content, simple navigation, and both timed and untimed norms. Dr. Jorgensen is the author of two patents pending around innovations in test and item development.

Dr. Jorgensen is knowledgeable in all areas of assessment and has developed tests, conducted research, pioneered innovative item types and assessment formats, designed friendly and useful score reports, and authored books and articles — all initiatives focused on more meaningful ways to systematically capture evidence about what students know and can do.

Doug Stein
MemeSpark LLC, Principal

Doug has over 20 years experience in educational software and technology, building successful products and businesses. As VP Development at Learning.com, he led the creation of a SaaS platform serving 2+ million K-8 students with multiple instruction and assessment titles.

Previously, Doug co-founded Addison Wesley Interactive, an innovator in interactive media in higher ed math, physics, engineering, and economics. Doug also served as CTO in 3 financial services and enterprise application software firms and was a Principal Consultant for Microsoft. His early software engineer career was at Wolfram Research (developers of Mathematica) and BBN’s Educational Technology group. Following graduate school, Doug created and led the computer science department at a New England prep school.

Trained as a physicist, Doug’s BA is from the University of Pennsylvania and his MA is from SUNY at Stony Brook. He co-authored Mathematica in the Laboratory published by Cambridge University Press.

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