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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

Lou Gray
President & CEO, Co-founder, Board Member

Lou brings over 17 years of entrepreneurial and transactional leadership to DreamBox Learning. Before co-founding DreamBox Learning, Lou was President of UIEvolution, a venture-backed middleware company. As President, he initiated and closed multi-million dollar contracts (Disney, ESPN, etc.), as well as pursued and successfully negotiated the acquisition of UIEvolution by Square Enix for $58M cash, providing a substantial return for all shareholders. Post UIEvolution, Lou was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the venture capital firm Ignition Partners. Lou has also served as Strategic Development Officer for W.R. Grace & Co.; Director of Mergers & Acquisitions for JettAir Holdings (a ROI-producing LBO firm); and a Marketing Associate for Hutcheson Shutze.

Lou holds a B.S. in Psychology from Emory University, M.A.s in both Economics and International Affairs from the Maxwell School, and a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where he was both a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar and a Teaching Fellow in negotiations.

Sarah Daniels
Vice President of Marketing

Sarah has over 15 years of experience as a senior executive at successful start-ups, leading marketing, product management, and sales teams. Prior to joining DreamBox, she spent 6 years as VP of Marketing and Product Management at Aventail Corporation, a provider of award-winning SSL VPN solutions for secure remote access. Previously, Sarah 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 Engineering

Dan has over 20 years of software development experience. Prior to joining DreamBox, Dan was VP of Engineering for Pure Networks (a Seattle technology start-up), where he was instrumental in identifying, securing and delivering their flagship AOL business. Dan was 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.

Cristopher Cook
Creative Director

Cris has been designing award-winning products for education, children's entertainment, and businesses for more than 10 years. Before joining DreamBox, Cris was Graphic Design Lead at UIEvolution Inc. for 5+ years, where he was responsible for corporate identity, marketing materials, and mobile application design for clients that included Disney, Starwave Mobile, ESPN, Qualcomm, the PGA Tour, and Square Enix. Prior to UIEvolution, Cris was Senior Designer at The Walt Disney Internet Group where he worked on a series of communication applications for the web. Before Disney, Cris was Lead Designer at Headbone Interactive, an education and entertainment software company. From 1996 until 2000, Cris created market-leading design solutions for CD-ROM and the web for both original products and clients such as General Mills, Harper Collins, Nortel Networks, Fleet Bank, Kodak, and The History Channel.

Cris is a graduate of the Seattle Central Community College Design and Illustration program, has served on a graphic design curriculum advisory board for the Auburn School District, and was a speaker at the JavaOne conference.

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

Benjamin W. Slivka
Chairman & Co-founder

Ben has 20+ years of experience as a successful technology innovator, and has spent much of the past 10 years assisting various non-profit and for-profit educational organizations. Ben is Chairman and Co-Founder of DreamBox Learning and a Director of TeachFirst. He previously served on the Advisory Board of UIEvolution (acquired by Square Enix) and as a Director of Vizrea and GroundSpring.org. Ben spent 14 years at Microsoft, where he worked on OS/2, MS-DOS 6, Windows 95, the Java VM, and MSN. He started the Internet Explorer team in 1994 and led it through the release of IE version 3.0 in 1996. IE 3.0 beat Netscape 3.0 in press reviews and achieved 30% market share by the time IE 4.0 released in 1997. Ben installed Microsoft's first production LAN in 1985, proposed the FAT32 file system in 1990, led the team that wrote the Win32 API specification in 1991, and started and led the team that created CAB software distribution files in 1993. His work at Microsoft resulted in 18 issued U.S. patents. Ben also worked brief stints at Amazon and IBM.

Ben and his wife Lisa created the Wissner-Slivka Foundation in 1997, primarily focused on supporting education. His non-profit engagements include Bellevue Schools Foundation, Garfield High School Foundation, and Social Venture Partners, where he is the lead partner for Seattle MESA.

Ben earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and a B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University, where he has served as a Trustee since 1998.

Lou Gray
President & CEO, Co-founder

(See above)

Harel Kodesh
Chief Product Officer, Amdocs Inc.

Harel Kodesh currently serves as Amdocs Inc's Chief Product Officer where he has overall responsibility for Amdocs' product lineup. Amdocs builds products and provides services to the telecommunication community and powers most of the world's large carriers' back office system. Prior to Amdocs Harel served as the CEO of Wingcast, a joint venture between the Ford Motor Company and Qualcomm that developed a worldwide telematics solution. Before that, until 2000, he held a variety of executive positions at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, most recently, as the Vice President of the Information Appliances Division where he founded the WindowsCE group and led the development and marketing of the company's wide-ranging mobility efforts.

Earlier in his career at Microsoft, Harel managed the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) team, which created the Component Object Model, a key technology used in the Windows operating system. He also previously worked for Motorola, where he managed a team responsible for Motorola's early efforts in wireless data.

Harel holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He resides in Bellevue, Washington. He served on the board of Mobilitec Inc (sold to Lucent), and currently serves on Xeround's board.

Brad Chase
Microsoft (retired), Senior Vice-President

Brad is a strategy, leadership and marketing consultant, currently working with technology start-ups such as DreamBox Learning. Before consulting, Brad spent 14 years at Microsoft, retiring as Senior Vice-President and Executive Officer after leading the turnaround of MSN.com. His team doubled revenue and traffic and MSN became the most popular worldwide on-line service.

Prior to MSN, Brad led marketing for Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer versions 1 through 5. Brad's marketing team helped IE become the market leader. Brad also developed and led the marketing strategy, execution and worldwide launch for Windows 95, he oversaw the record-breaking launches for both MS-DOS 5 and MS-DOS 6, and he was a Product Manager for early versions of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1987, Brad worked as a sales representative for Boise Cascade's office products division.

He holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and a BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Bryon Bishop
Expedia (retired), Senior Vice-President

Byron joined DreamBox Learning as a Senior Software Engineer (part-time) in 2007. Prior to DreamBox Learning, he co-founded Expedia in 1993 and served in numerous roles before retiring in 2003. As Senior Vice President and as an Executive Officer, Byron was responsible for all product development, led the air travel business, and created Expedia's Corporate Travel division. Prior to the Expedia spin-out from Microsoft in 1999, he spent 13 years at Microsoft where he worked in various software engineering and management roles on software development tools, Windows for Pen, and a Windows CE precursor. He currently serves on the boards of The Nature Conservancy of Washington and Eastside Preparatory School. Byron earned a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Washington.

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. 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 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.

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