The coronavirus pandemic sparked a worldwide remote learning experiment. While other sectors failed, the pandemic transformed a slowly developing EdTech industry from a ‘nice-to-have’ to a ‘must-have’, dramatically accelerating growth in the sector. Our report highlights the recent M&A and investment activity in the EdTech market and examines the impact of the pandemic on K-12, higher and corporate education. You can access the report here.
Shu Dar is Head of Investments at RSF where she leads asset management and equity investing strategies. She is passionate about scaling innovations in impact investing, evidence and outcomes based financing, and addressing social and environmental injustice. Previously she led Capital Formation and Investor Relations at Social Finance, a nonprofit focusing on Pay for Success financing and Social Impact Bonds. She has also served as Vice President at Citigroup, focusing on investing in social enterprises, Green Bonds, and microfinance. At International Finance Corporation she worked on Global Infrastructure project finance, and at JPMorgan she was an investment banker serving mostly technology clients in global M&A, Syndicated Leveraged Finance and Private Equity Sponsors. Shu Dar received an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management and graduated magna cum laude from NYU, Stern School of Business with a BS in Finance and International Business.
Mr. Weil is a Managing Director at TowerBrook Capital Partners. Prior to joining TowerBrook, Mr. Weil was a strategic consultant to The Blackstone Group within the Tactical Opportunities Fund and the GSO Special Situations Fund. Previously, he was an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley where he ran the US Asset Backed trading business and co-ran the US Asset Backed Complex. Mr. Weil earned his B.S. from the University of Colorado, Leeds School of Business, where he currently serves on the Board. Mr. Weil also serves on the Board of Trustees to University of Colorado System Foundation.
TowerBrook Capital Partners L.P. is an investment management firm with in excess of $13.4 billion under management and a history of creating value for investors. The firm is co-headquartered in New York and London and focuses on making investments in companies headquartered in North America and Europe. TowerBrook’s private equity strategy primarily pursues control-oriented investments in large and mid-market companies, principally on a proprietary basis and often in situations characterised by complexity. TowerBrook’s structured opportunities strategy allows access to a broad array of opportunities, principally via structured asset and structured equity investments, enabling investment companies to access funding and expertise to support growth without ceding control. TowerBrook is a certified B Corporation. B Corporation certification is administered by the non-profit B Lab organisation and is awarded to companies that demonstrate leadership in their commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and responsible business practices.
Ollen Douglass is the Managing Director of Motley Fool Ventures, a new venture capital business based in Alexandria, VA. It’s first offering, launched in 2018, is an early stage tech-focused venture capital fund. Prior to creating the fund, Ollen was CFO of The Motley Fool Holdings, Inc. for 14 years. Over the course of his career, Ollen has worked with government, nonprofit, private and public entities. He has raised over a quarter billion of capital, ranging from bank dept to venture capital. Ollen serves on the board of Eyrus, InHerSight and the non-profit, Young Artists of America. He was twice nominated for Greater Washington CFO of the Year, received the Greater Washington Minority Business Leaders award, and was recognized as one of the Washington DC Power 100. Ollen graduated from the University of Baltimore and is a CPA (inactive). He lives in the Washington, DC area with his wife and 3 sons.
Alice Vilma is a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley in New York City on the Multicultural Client Strategy Team. In this role, she works with her partners at the Firm to strengthen Morgan Stanley’s connection to the multicultural business community by identifying, developing and executing commercial opportunities with corporate, government, institutional and individual clients. She is also Co-head of the Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, an accelerator that invests in and supports tech and techenabled startups with a multicultural or woman founder. Ms. Vilma has been with Morgan Stanley for 13 years and has worked in different roles within the Global Capital Markets Division, including Equity Capital Markets, Securitization and GCM Management. She began her career at Morgan Stanley upon graduation from college as a financial analyst and also worked at CIT and Sallie Mae prior to returning to Morgan Stanley in 2009. Ms. Vilma has 20 years of investment banking, capital markets, structured finance and investing experience across various asset classes and sectors, executing over $25Bn of securitization, structured finance and equity transactions over that time. Her different experiences have rounded out her skill set and provided unique perspectives that have proven advantageous to her in her current role working across the Firm and with early-stage tech startups. She graduated Cum Laude with a B.B.A. in Finance from the University of Miami and received her MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Arthur Andrew Bavelas is the Founder of Bavelas Group Family Office, Family Office Insights, Family Office Funding Challenge, LearnOZ and Global Sustainability Exchange.
As a globally recognized entrepreneur, author, and family office investor, Arthur Bavelas is a pioneer in developing one of the first private opportunity review networks, Family Office Insights, for investors within the family office community.
Fostering a collaborative method of evaluation and delivering a more efficient potential investment pipeline, Family Office Insights initiates timely peer-to-peer review of limited access investment opportunities. Driven by dissatisfaction at lack of choices for private capital allocation, he founded Family Office Insights in 1998 to provide meaningful access and engagement opportunities for active, socially conscious entrepreneurs and wealth managers.
Mr. Bavelas draws upon his own experience founding, building and exiting a successful technology startup to evaluate current opportunities that often feature innovative intellectual property, bridge customer/market access, or solve some of the world’s most daunting challenges.
As a co-founder of The Global Sustainability Exchange and other impact efforts, Mr. Bavelas seeks to raise awareness and provide open access to technologies and innovation to effect societal and environmental change. He frequently speaks about wealth preservation, the new economies, entrepreneurship and legacy investing. His written work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and many others.
Geri Stengel believes that the entrepreneurial world is at a moment of meaningful change: Women and minorities will lead that change. Her company, Ventureneer, specializes in defining and eliminating problems that hold underrepresented entrepreneurs back, especially minorities and women. Our work provides clients with branding opportunities that generate thought-leadership, visibility, sales, and brand loyalty, including:
David Gardner is the Co-Founder and Chief Rule Breaker at The Motley Fool, a financial services company he started in 1993 alongside his brother, Tom. In Shakespeare, the court jester—or Fool—was the one person who could speak the truth to the king or queen without having his head lopped off. In the same way, The Motley Fool’s purpose is to help the world invest better by speaking the truth about Wall Street and empowering millions of people to take control of their financial lives.
Not only is The Motley Fool on a mission to help the world invest better, we also believe in helping the world work better. With an unyielding focus on workplace culture and employee engagement, The Motley Fool has twice been named Glassdoor’s #1 Best Medium-Sized Company to Work For in America.
David graduated as a Morehead-Cain Scholar from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1988 and is a recipient of UNC’s prestigious “Distinguished Young Alumni Award.” He served on the Individual Investor Advisory Committee of the New York Stock Exchange for 15 years and the prestigious Folger Shakespeare Library for 10 years.
Dr. Pamela Ryan is Managing Partner of the Tingari Group, a portfolio of business partnerships, venture investments, and organizations, including the Tingari Silverton Foundation (TSF). Dr. Ryan has led the transition of this portfolio toward investing through an impact lens over all asset classes. Pamela has served as a Limited Partner in US and Australian venture capital firms for over 30 years and acted as advisor and consulting psychologist to VC firms in the USA and Australia as well as VC funded portfolio companies – ranging from semiconductor manufacturing to retail to hospitality. She has advised the South Australian government on building an innovation ecosystem in South Australia, drawing on cutting edge research from around the world on the characteristics of VC firms/funds for optimal success. Pamela served on the Advisory Boards of True Wealth Ventures (a gender lens VC firm) and South Texas Money Management ($4.5 billion under management). Pamela manages a portfolio of business partnerships, organizations and investments (Tingari Group, including Tingari-Silverton Foundation) and chaired international NGOs Psychology Beyond Borders and Issues Deliberation Australia for ten+ years each. The author of two books, Impact Imperative and Magic Carpet Flying, as well as academic papers like “Why Some Venture Capitalists Escalate & Others Don’t”, “The Psychology of Microfinance” and “The Future of Entrepreneurship and Impact,” Pamela has received an Honorary Doctorate (UniSA) and an Order of Australia Medal (Australian Government) for her contribution to psychology and Australia. Dr. Ryan received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin with award winning research on the psychology of decision-making in the US venture capital industry Dr. Ryan has taught entrepreneurship at the McCoombs Business School at the University of Texas and the psychology of decision-making at the Australian Graduate School of Management.
An engineer by training, fintech expert by experience and entrepreneur by accident, Safwan is the founder and CEO of PayActiv, a Public Benefit Corporation certified by B Corp Prior to PayActiv, Safwan founded Infonox, which was acquired by TSYS (now Global Payments). An innovator with a mission, purpose and real results, Safwan is a noted public speaker and his work has been featured in the NYT, WSJ, LA Times and on NPR. Safwan’s book, It’s About TIME, calls for businesses to embrace the mantle of saving the world and has been published by Conscious Capitalism Press. In 2019, Safwan received the George Norlin Award, the highest alumni honor for his devotion towards the betterment of society from CU Boulder, where he received his PhD in aerospace engineering and worked for Bioserve Space Technologies, a NASA center for the commercialization of space. Safwan has taught at the Haas School of Business, Berkeley and Baskin School of Engineering in Santa Cruz, and is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program.
Nichol Bradford is fascinated by human possibility and how technology can help individuals expand their mental and emotional capacity.
She spent the last decade exploring these ideas in the online game industry, serving as a senior executive with responsibility for strategy, operations and marketing for major brands that include: Activision Blizzard, Disney, and Vivendi. Most recently she managed the operations of Blizzard properties, including World of Warcraft, in China.
Now, as the CEO of the Willow Group and Executive Director of the Transformative Technology Lab, Nichol is applying those same skills to the realm of elevating psychological well-being. At the TTL, she supports entrepreneurs and innovators leveraging tech to support mental health, emotional wellbeing, and human flourishing. TTL is the nexus point for Transformative Technology for the academic, industry, and public sectors. Willow is a transformative technology consulting company focused on employing rigorous scientific research to develop training protocols, hardware and software that can produce a reliable and positive change in the human experience.
Nichol is a graduate of Singularity University GSP15, has an MBA from Wharton School of Business in Strategy, and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Houston. She is a fellow of the British American Project, served on the board of the Brandon Marshall Foundation for Mental Health, and is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Learn more at www.nicholbradford.com
Finally, having amassed extensive experience in gaming, wellbeing, and exponential tech Nichol does consulting for Transformative Tech companies and corporates seeking to enter the wellbeing tech space.
Sunny Vanderbeck is an investor, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and former military leader focused on accelerating the growth of mid-market companies and creating best-in-class, built-to-last businesses.
Sunny is co-founder of Satori Capital, a multi-strategy investment firm founded on the principles of conscious capitalism. By providing real-world insights from its experienced team and long-term funding with no fixed time constraints, Satori acts as a true partner for its portfolio companies as it challenges them to pursue extraordinary outcomes for all stakeholder groups.
Before founding Satori, Sunny co-founded and served as CEO of Data Return, a leading provider of managed services and utility computing. The company sustained 40% quarter-over-quarter growth for more than three years and reached a $3 billion market capitalization, making Sunny one of the youngest CEOs ever to lead a Nasdaq company. For more than a decade, Sunny led the company through all phases of growth and transformation, received numerous honors including an “Entrepreneur of the Year” finalist designation from Ernst and Young, and nurtured a conscious culture for all of the business’ stakeholders.
His experiences with building, selling, buying back, and re-selling Data Return, along with his subsequent involvement with dozens of private businesses at Satori, led Sunny to publish his first book, Selling Without Selling Out: How to Sell Your Business Without Selling Your Soul. The book serves as a roadmap for business leaders who face the unique challenges and quandaries involved in selling a business or taking on a financial partner. Drawing on hard-won wisdom earned through decades of experience, Sunny and other business founders and CEOs provide pragmatic guidance on navigating the complicated ins and outs of the sale process while preserving what matters most. Visit SunnyVanderbeck.com for more information on the book and supplemental materials.
Prior to founding Data Return, Sunny served as a Section Leader of the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment and led technical teams at Microsoft. Both roles helped him learn the value of principled leadership in extraordinarily challenging situations. Sunny continues to share his thoughts on leadership, strategy, business operations, and long-term value creation as a sought-after speaker and as an advisor and board member to several private companies. He is also a long-standing member of YPO formerly Young Presidents’ Organization), where he served as the North American co-chair of the organization’s sustainable business network and co-founded the YPO Entrepreneurship and Innovation Network, which helps more than 3,500 president and CEO members accelerate the growth of their businesses.
Amanda Kathryn Roman has been called a cultural translator, a catalyst for creativity, an innovative designer, a dynamic high-energy speaker, a rockstar facilitator, a maven network-builder, and a transformational coach. At her core, Amanda is intensely passionate and extraordinarily skillful in activating, building, and cultivating organizational culture during times of rapid growth or change in strategy. She excels in bridging divides and creating space for contribution by connecting stakeholders from the arenas of business, investment, academia, government, community, and media to unleash the potential of each individual in the ecosystem.
Living in passionate pursuit of service to others, for two decades and counting, Amanda has been traveling in planes, trains, automobiles, buses, boats—and even a gondola—while successfully navigating the board meetings of countless service organizations; the green rooms of local and national media outlets; the halls of Congress; the inner sanctums of Fortune 500 companies; the offices of international policy organizations and elected officials around the world; the West Wing of the White House and the chambers of state legislatures; as well as the homes of philanthropists to deliver sustainable results imbued with love and legacy. Her work has been profiled in a variety of outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Post.
Tim Chang is a Partner at Mayfield Fund, focusing on venture capital invests in Consumer Internet, Digital Media, eCommerce/Marketplaces and Health/Wellness. He has been twice named on the Midas List of top 100 VCs. Tim led Mayfield’s investments in MOAT (acquired by Oracle), Basis (acquired by Intel), Fitmob (acquired by Classpass), Ript Labs, Grove Collaborative, Massdrop, Pillow, HealthTap, 3Drobotics, and Lantern. Tim was previously a Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, where he led NVP’s investment in Playdom (acquired by Disney), ngmoco (acquired by DeNA), AdChina (acquired by Alibaba), PCH International, and Lumosity. Prior to joining Norwest, Tim was a Principal at Gabriel Venture Partners, where he established and led their wireless practice, investing and joining the board of Iridigm Display (acquired by Qualcomm). He was also actively involved with the boards of Placeware (acquired by Microsoft), IPWireless (acquired by NextWave) and NextG Networks (acquired by private equity syndicate). Before entering the venture capital industry, Tim was a Product Manager at Gateway, where he launched Enterprise products into the Japanese market, and began his career as a tri-lingual development engineer for General Motors, working across China, Korea, and Japan.
Tim received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he graduated in the top 10% of his class as an Arjay Miller Scholar. He also holds an MSEE and BSEE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, where he was a Deparmental Scholar and received full fellowship.
Tim’s venture investment focus areas include eCommerce, Marketplaces, Digital Communities/Media/Gaming, Quantified Self/Life, Digital Health & Wellness, SmartHome and Connected Devices/IoT, as well as cross-border Asia-related startups.
Gary Moon is the Managing Partner of Nfluence Partners. Spun out in 2018, Nfluence was originally founded in 2011 as the Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) group at Headwaters MB. Gary and his partners built Headwaters into a top 5 technology-focused boutique Investment Bank ranked by closed transactions in 2017. Over the past 12 years, Gary and the Nfluence team have completed nearly 200 transactions, repeatedly demonstrating tenacity, creativity and effectiveness on behalf of their clients. Prior to joining Headwaters, Gary was the Managing Director of Europe for Ridgecrest Capital Partners, a Boutique Investment Bank focused on Technology Mergers & Acquisitions. In this capacity, Gary led the efforts of the firm in growing the European practice which ultimately comprised a significant percentage firm’s revenues. Prior to joining Ridgecrest, Gary led the Mobile, Wireless and Communications Technology practices for Viant Capital, a Boutique Investment Bank in San Francisco. Gary has been a strategic and financial advisor to numerous technology and growth firms and has extensive experience with both institutionally financed and founder financed ventures. Gary has advised on client exits to such prominent companies as AT&T, Cisco, Equifax, Microsoft, Nuance, Tyco International and WeWork, and has helped firms raise growth capital and complete private equity recapitalizations from name brand institutional investors. Prior to embarking on his advisory career, Gary was the founder and CEO of Luna Communications, a North American focused wireless systems integration firm. Luna Communications was sold to a publicly traded competitor, where Gary became the CTO and Managing Director of Client Services.