Board of Directors
Board of Directors. Guidance on Outcomes.
Mark Atkinson, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Mark Atkinson has been Chief Executive Officer of Teachscape since July 1999. Prior to founding Teachscape, Mr. Atkinson was a network news producer with extensive experience in reporting, producing, and directing network news documentaries. He was Senior Producer and Manager of New Markets for CBS News Productions, where he developed new business opportunities, focusing on multimedia production and the education market. In his role as Senior Producer, CBS News Productions, he directed the production of The 20th Century with Mike Wallace, a nightly one-hour nonfiction television series for The History Channel. Prior to joining CBS, he was a producer for Peter Jennings Reporting, ABC News, where he produced network news specials for Mr. Jennings. Mr. Atkinson's production credits include: While America Watched: The Bosnia Tragedy; House on Fire: America's Haitian Crisis; The Peacekeepers: How the UN Failed in Bosnia; The Apocalypse and Al Gore; Rage and Betrayal: The Lives of Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols; Unfinished Business: The CIA and Saddam Hussein. Mr. Atkinson received the Gold Baton, the highest honor of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, for work associated with reporting the war in Bosnia. He was also awarded the Overseas Press Club Award and an Emmy Award for reporting on the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. Prior to his career in journalism, Mr. Atkinson worked with various labor unions in collective bargaining and corporate strategy. Mr. Atkinson is a graduate of Yale University, Mr. Atkinson presently serves as a trustee of the Oracle Education Foundation.
Michael Finnerty, Director
Michael Finnerty served as the President and Chief Operating Officer of Teachscape from December 2000 through September 2004. Prior to joining Teachscape, Mr. Finnerty served as an Officer of Edison Schools Inc. from its inception in 1992, participating in every aspect of the development of the company, from conceptual product design and business plan development to current operations in 21 states generating more than $350 million in annual revenue. Mr. Finnerty brings to Teachscape a strong background in finance and operations management. As Edison's Chief Financial Officer, he oversaw all capital finance, accounting, payroll, banking, and risk management. At Edison, he moved into the role of Executive Vice President for School Operations, where he managed the roll-out of Edison programs to client school districts and Charter School Boards, to create and operate Edison Schools. Prior to his career with Edison, Mr. Finnerty served as Chief Financial and Administrative Officer at Yale University. Before that, he served as Budget Director for New York's Governor Mario Cuomo and Chief of Staff for New York's Governor Hugh Carey. A graduate of Manhattan College, Mr. Finnerty holds a master's in public administration from New York University.
Robert Finzi, Co-Managing Partner, Sprout Group
Bob Finzi joined Sprout as General Partner in May 1991, when Sprout assumed management of two public venture capital funds originated by Merrill Lynch, and became Co-Managing Partner in November 2003. Prior to that, Mr. Finzi joined Merrill Lynch Venture Capital, Inc. in 1984 and became a partner in 1985. Previously, he was an associate with Menlo Ventures and served as a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Mr. Finzi attended Harvard Business School (M.B.A., Baker Scholar, Loeb Rhoades Fellow) and Lehigh University (B.S., with Highest Honors; M.S., Byllesby Fellow).
Janet Hickey, Co-Managing Partner, Sprout Group
Janet Hickey joined Sprout in 1985 as a General Partner and became Co-Managing Partner in November 2003. She previously served as Senior Vice President of Venture Investments for the General Electric Investment Corp., which she joined in 1970. Ms. Hickey held a variety of positions at GE, including 12 years as Trustee of the General Electric Pension Trust as well as Director of Research and Manager-Pension Trust Equities. She was also a securities analyst at Eastman, Dillon, Union Securities. Ms. Hickey, who attended Mount Holyoke College and the University of St. Andrews, is a former Director of the National Venture Capital Association, an original inductee in the "Private Equity Hall of Fame," and a Trustee of Mount Holyoke College.
Andrew Kaplan, General Partner, Quad Partners
Prior to joining Quad, Andrew Kaplan was a business manager at several leading education companies. Before joining Kaplan, Inc. as a senior executive, he served as Director of the Educational Technology Group at Scholastic. Mr. Kaplan holds an M.B.A. from NYU's Stern Business School and a B.A. in computer science from Brandeis University.
Roy Pea, Director, Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning at Stanford University
Roy Pea, who co-founded Teachscape in 1999, is a Stanford University Professor of Education and the Learning Sciences and Director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning (http://scil.stanford.edu). He has published 130 chapters and articles on such topics as distributed cognition, learning and education fostered by advanced technologies (e.g., scientific visualization), online communities, digital video collaboratories, and wireless handheld computers (http://www.stanford.edu/~roypea). Dr. Pea's current work is addressing new paradigms for everyday networked video interactions and how informal and formal learning can be better understood and connected. Co-author of the National Academy Press's How People Learn, Dr. Pea is a Fellow of the National Academy of Education, American Psychological Society, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. An IBM Faculty Fellow in 2006, he received a doctorate in developmental psychology from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
James Regan, General Partner, Harbourton Enterprises
James (Jay) Regan is a general partner in Harbourton Enterprises, which oversees the investments of his family office. These investments range from technical trading programs to private equity and venture capital. Mr. Regan has been in the investment field since 1964, having worked at White, Weld & Co. and Kidder, Peabody & Co. In addition, he was President of Oakley Sutton Securities Corp., a registered broker-dealer, and for 20 years was the Managing General Partner of Princeton/Newport Partners, a private investment partnership which managed approximately $250 million of capital on behalf of 90 limited partners. Mr. Regan is a former trustee of Princeton Day School, where he served as Vice-Chairman. He is a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute and is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the American Ballet Theatre in New York City. Mr. Regan is also an active board member of many charitable organizations, including the Young Scholars' Institute, Inc., in Trenton, New Jersey, and the Harbourton Foundation, where he serves as President. Mr. Regan received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and attended New York University Graduate School of Business Administration. He serves on the board of many companies in which Harbourton made investments.
Marshall S. Smith, Program Director, Education, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Marshall (Mike) S. Smith has been Program Director for Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, since 2001. Prior to that, he was Acting Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Education in the Clinton Administration. During the Carter Administration, Mr. Smith was Chief of Staff to the Secretary for Education and Assistant Commissioner for Policy Studies in the Office of Education. While not in government, he was at different times an Assistant Professor at Harvard, and a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Stanford University, where he was also Dean of the School of Education. A member of the National Academy of Education, Mr. Smith has authored numerous publications on topics ranging from computer content analysis to early childhood education to effective schools and standards-based reform.
Andrew W. Hallowell, Partner, Arcadia Partners
Andrew Hallowell is a founding partner of Arcadia Partners, a leading venture capital firm in the training and education industry. Mr. Hallowell also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of KnowledgePlanet, an on-demand learning management suite of software and services. Prior to founding Arcadia, Mr. Hallowell was employed by Foster Management from 1997 to 1998 as a Principal, where he was responsible for managing portfolio company investments, as well as actively identifying and reviewing new investment opportunities. Mr. Hallowell also served as General Partner with Industrial Capital Group, a 21-year old leveraged buyout fund engaged in the purchase of small capitalization private companies. Earlier in his career, Mr. Hallowell served as Head of the Financial Institutions Group at Brown Brothers Harriman & Company ("Brown Brothers"). There, he led numerous debt and equity placements, and later became the Brown Brothers U.S. Banking Division's youngest Group Head. In the mid-1980's, Mr. Hallowell was the Port Genoa and Spinnaker Trimmer on the New York Yacht Club's America II challenge to bring back the America's Cup in Perth, Australia. Mr. Hallowell received a Master in Business Administration Degree from Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, he won the Award for Outstanding Service to the Community. Mr. Hallowell received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Political Economy of Natural Resources from the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to founding Arcadia, Mr. Hallowell was employed by Foster Management from 1997 to 1998 as a Principal, where he was responsible for managing portfolio company investments, as well as actively identifying and reviewing new investment opportunities.
Joanne Weiss, Partner & COO, NewSchools Venture Fund
Joanne Weiss is Partner and Chief Operating Officer at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she focuses on investments and management assistance to portfolio ventures in the Performance Accelerator Fund and oversees the organization's operations. Prior to joining NewSchools Venture Fund, Ms. Weiss was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build their teams quickly and well. Before her tenure at Claria, she spent 20 years in the design, development, and marketing of technology-based products and services for education. Ms. Weiss was Senior Vice President of Product Development at Pensare, an e-learning company that created business innovation programs for the Fortune 500 market. Prior to Pensare, she was co-founder, interim CEO, and Vice President of Products and Technologies at Academic Systems, a company that helps hundreds of thousands of college students prepare for college-level work in mathematics and English. In the early 1990s, Joanne was Executive Vice President of Business Operations at Wasatch Education Systems, where she led the product development, customer service, and operations organizations for this K-12 educational technology company. She began her career as Vice President of Education R&D at Wicat Systems, where she was responsible for the development of nearly 100 multimedia curriculum products for K-12 schools. Ms. Weiss, who holds a degree in biochemistry from Princeton University, has spent much of her career pioneering innovative ways of using technology to increase the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes.