Bilge Arslan
Yale-NUS College
Singapore (1.3° N, 103.8° E)

featuring Jasmeet Sidhu, MasterClass, supervising creative producer/director, San Francisco (37.7° N, 122.4° W)

Samuel Anozie
University of Texas
Dallas (32.7° N, 96.7° W)

featuring Albert Wei, Chief Strategy and Growth Officer, ProUnitas, Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

As a chief strategy and growth officer at ProUnitas, Albert Wei works with his team each day to ensure school districts’ student support departments can provide on-demand, personalized care for 170,000 students in the Houston area. From mental health agencies to social service organizations, ProUnitas creates automated networks between stand-alone student resources and enables school administrations to focus on one thing—quality education. Their debut service, PurpleSENSE, ensures a 60 percent reduction in administrative busywork, with a 90 percent reduction in the time it takes for at-risk students to be identified and receive services. That translates to streamlined support for students from systems already in place to help them and informed decision-making on the part of administrations concerning the systems available to their students.

As an educator, Albert has taught in some of Houston’s most disadvantaged schools as part of Teach for America. After graduating from Rice University with a bachelor’s degree in political science and education policy, he has earned multiple teaching-related awards, including the 2013 Beginning Teacher of the Year distinction for Houston Independent School District. He contributed greatly to his school, becoming social studies department chair and the director of the College and Career Center at Sharpstown High School, before eventually moving to ProUnitas.

Throughout our interview, we discussed the importance of quality education, in the obvious facets as well as the less apparent ones. We agreed that the role of education does not stop in the classroom and workplace, but seeps into every part of developing modern society, including politics and policy, economics, and culture. We also discussed the future of technology in education and the importance of the mindsets with which they are created. Having a clear vision of impact, and sticking to that vision, is a challenge that every product team must deal with, especially organizations working in such an influential field as education. Retaining and nurturing that vision can result in a powerful catalyst for an organization’s success.

The most consistent theme from our conversation was the concept of humility. As a director, educator, and son, Albert has experienced the power of humility within many aspects of life. Company culture can influence the way interactions occur with target audiences, so a culture rooted in humility revolves around attentiveness toward the needs of that audience. Teachers have large amounts of influence over students’ lives, which means that teachers who do not take the time to put themselves in the shoes of students may not use their influence effectively. Finally, children can grow to be more accomplished than their parents, but it takes humility to understand the sacrifices that enabled opportunities to grow.

Highlights from the interview:

Let’s say that you are in a room with the lawmakers of this country responsible for education policy, budgeting, and programs that they do. What would you rant to them about?

Certainly, you definitely see funding being taken out from schools constantly. Education isn’t always a priority for our country, which is disappointing. I definitely would specifically talk to them about two things. The first thing would be early childhood education. We don’t really invest in our pre-K, we don’t invest in prenatal care. There’s not a lot of funding for it; it’s really based around a parent’s ability to pay for additional schooling, and it’s not compulsory to go to school until…kindergarten. Not everyone goes to preschool. But just having that availability of getting kids early in so that they’re not falling behind, that’s super, super important…That’s where the biggest bang for your buck comes from too, when they’re kids and babies, not when they’re juniors and seniors in high school. A lot of the resources tend to go when the kids are already in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and that’s too late already as well. There’s a statistic that says that they plan for prison beds, the capacity for prisons, based around third grade reading levels…If you can’t read by the time that you’re in third grade, chances that you’ll enter the prison pipeline [are] way, way higher. So, get them while they’re young is the first piece. So, really investing in universal pre-K, and even prenatal care—so when mothers are pregnant with children, how do we care about them, how do we teach mothers to be better mothers to their unborn child…things like that.

The second piece is kind of what we do here at ProUnitas, is to invest more in infrastructure around how we create more efficiencies between systems. So right now…we all operate in silos, in individual silos, so school districts are like, “Oh, we’re the school district. We teach kids…This nonprofit over here is doing their thing, this church over here is doing their thing, this person over there…” so everyone’s doing their own thing and focusing on that. Where do we go to build in a lot more connection between all these different parts? And part of that is investing in these kinds of dialogues and conversations, getting people to work together and collaborate more. And technology has to be a part of it. So, how do we get technology to help facilitate relationships between partners, nonprofits, and school districts, so that a school district doesn’t have to be everything. A school district cannot be the food, the housing, the mental health for kids. They are responsible for teaching your child, but they can’t possibly do everything else, so where do we fall then, to get those things met, and that’s why we have all these nonprofits.

The United States is really, really powerful in the philanthropic world. You don’t see this in Europe, because obviously the taxes are so high, there’s a lot more government support…And so, if we’re going to stick to this idea of low taxes, everyone focuses on themselves—that’s why we have philanthropy that fills in those gaps. So, then, how do we use them more, how do we use nonprofits better, philanthropic dollars better, to connect kids to holistic things. You and I needed a lot of stuff to grow up successfully. We needed, again like I said, housing and food and emotional love and support…how do we provide that for kids that don’t have it? And if you think about something that a kid needs, there’ s a nonprofit for it. It’s somewhere in the city. How do we get them to connect to the kids? So we start there. We start there with the urban centers. I mean, if you think about the more rural parts of town where they don’t have a lot of nonprofits around, it’s just the one school and their homes; we haven’t figured that out yet, but there are so many kids here in the urban centers, in Houston, in Dallas, in Austin, in Los Angeles, New York…that is a lot of kids that need lots of support…We haven’t invested in that infrastructure to connect people, so I think we need to do that.

What do you think the impact of education tech looks like now? And what do you think it will look like in 10 years in relation to now?

I think ed tech is booming like crazy. There are so many organizations out there that are focusing on education technology to help support finance algorithms for school districts to be more efficient with their money and budgets. There’s online tutoring programs now…online tech platforms like Schoology that help kids organize their homework, allow teachers to communicate with their students through text messaging. There are so many organizations that are out there doing great things for ed[ucation]. And it’s become almost saturated; there’s too many ed tech companies that are just trying to do one thing or another. Again, how do we then connect them, or how do we collaborate to build better products for kids? So, as we see all this really great innovation happening—in San Francisco you see tons of it—how do we then learn from those individual organizations, collaborate so that we can all learn together?

Ten years from now, I think that education’s going to look so different. People even talk about robot teachers and this and that, and just staying at home and learning from a computer. I don’t know. I hope it doesn’t get to that. I think there’s something that’s irreplaceable with a human component of connection between two people. There’s a reason why we’re not on a Skype call right—it’s much better to be in person. And I think education is not just about the knowledge. It’s about the human connection that you make, and the memories that you have of the teacher that really inspired you and made you feel like you were special, you could accomplish a lot. So, 10 years from now, you’re going to have even more noise, so many more tech organizations trying to do this for kids, trying to do that for kids. It’s just our responsibility to figure out how to do it responsibly, and how do we do it so that we’re not robbing children of a true human connection. . I don’t really know what it’s going to look like in 10 years. I just know that there’s going to be more and more people who want to join the market. Some people want to make money; it’s not about kids, it’s about making money, even, as an ed tech company. So how do we prevent that from happening…So, I don’t know, we’ll see where it goes, but as we see it here at ProUnitas, we see people who really, really care. We see people who really care about kids, really want to do a good job with them, and are trying to do it so intentionally and so carefully, so I’m optimistic about it. I just know that there’s a lot of folks that just want to make a quick buck, so who knows? Hopefully the people who care about kids truly and are making ed tech solutions for that will outshine and outweigh the people who are just doing it to make money…

What are some challenges that teachers face when working to improve their style of teaching, how they deliver the concept?

It comes back to this idea of humility. If you, as a teacher, don’t think you need to get better…I’ve met lots of teachers who think they’re the best teacher…that’s never the attitude you want. If you have that attitude, then you’re doomed. You’re doomed as a teacher. You will not want to get better. You think you’re already top of the line stuff, so how are you going to seek more opportunities to develop yourself professionally? You just won’t. So, it starts with humility.

Now if you do have the humility to know that you don’t know a lot, that there’s still a lot to learn, there’s so many different ways to get a better sense of style—of what is your teacher voice, what is your teacher style. A lot of it is talking to other teachers who have done it. They always say in education there’s no stealing, there’s only borrowing and sharing. Because you take as much as you can from other teachers, if that’s a style that you love, and you watch another teacher teach and you’re like, “Wow, that’s a great way to teach X,” or “That’s a great way to handle rewards or discipline or whatever, take it. Do it, and incorporate it into your own classroom, and develop your own voice.”

I think one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made as a teacher was to try to adopt and be somebody else that I wasn’t…I tried to take a formula of strict—like, “I need everybody’s attention in five, four, three, two, one,” you know, kids don’t work like that a lot of the time, and especially if I didn’t have the personality to execute like that, then I shouldn’t do it. I should just focus on how I should get attention. How should I get my students’ attention from Albert’s style? And I constantly just kept looking at other examples. Watching the teacher down the hall teach, like, “Oh, that was a great way to do it, let me do that,” try it, “Oh man the kids really liked it, okay, I’ll keep that.” And it feels more natural to me to do that, so I’m going to keep doing that. And as you have more experience you start forming your own style of teaching, and then you’re that much more effective. And kids can tell. Students tell when you’re faking it, and you’re not comfortable with what you’re doing, so that’s—it’s good feedback too, and you want to get it from your students as well. 

Outside of your professional life, what is one thing that you are the proudest of?

I think that I’m really proud of, again, just how I operate in the world as just a general person. I’m really proud of my role as a son, for example. I constantly reflect on how much my parents have supported me and taught me a lot. I remember—some of my best memories as a kid is my mom and I sitting on the bed and her talking to me about stories when she was a young woman, young girl, and the lessons that she learned from just living her life. And those are values, the values that she grew up with. Now as an adult, and as I talk to my parents more, and how much I realize that they’ve done for me, I think that being a good son means X, Y, Z. It means even though my parents are very, “Oh, go do your own thing, who cares? We’ll be here if you need us, but don’t worry about us,” kind of thing, being a good son means calling them, listening to them. My parents are big children, too. They have their own problems, and they’re not the superheroes that we thought they were when we were kids, so they have their own issues. And when they have their own issues, I think a beautiful role that I can play is to be a support system for them. So, sometimes my mom is sad, and I should be able to talk to her about that, and she should be able to share things with me. She’s human. She has her bad days and her good days, and same with my dad. So, to be a resource, and a child that can do that for their parents, I think, is really powerful, and I’m quite proud of that. And, you know, it’s also just a constant reflection of—if I can do that for my parents, then I can do that for my team, I can do that for my work, so it’s all connected in so many ways, yeah. 

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.

Douglas Graham
Rice University
Houston (29.7° N, 95.3° W)

featuring Dr. Karen Book, Senior Data Analyst, Boston Public Schools, Boston (42.3° N, 71.0° W)

Dr. Karen Book is a senior data analyst at Boston Public Schools. She works on the planning and analysis team, where she evaluates and presents data to support the school district’s enrollment planning. She graduated from Rice University with a sociology degree in 2011 and earned a PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. While earning her doctorate, Dr. Book worked as an associate editor at the journal Social Forces, as a predoctoral trainee at the Carolina Population Center, and as a teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Our interview began with a conversation about Dr. Book’s path from college to her current profession as a senior data analyst. At Rice, she discovered an interest in understanding inequality with data investigation and for that reason decided to pursue a PhD in sociology. While she continued to enjoy analyzing data to study education and inequality in her doctoral program, Dr. Book found that the emphasis on publishing in academia did not align with her values. Hoping to take part in actionable research with direct impacts on communities, she became a data analyst, which allowed her to use the skills she learned in education, such as Stata and Microsoft Excel, to tell stories with data. By using data to show trends in school enrollment, Dr. Book and her team contribute to district decisions that result in positive outcomes for their community and school district. Dr. Book emphasized that software programs allow analysts to process data more efficiently and make more sophisticated diagrams and conclusions.

One significant piece of information I took from our conversation was that if you have an interest in a field of social science like sociology, learning data analysis through software programs will open interesting doors for your career. Dr. Book explained that data is the underlying language being used in many social science fields; knowing how to use it effectively is key to understanding and communicating ideas within those fields. In Dr. Book’s career, her unique combination of expertise with the technical software Stata and her passion for combating inequality in communities set her on the path to a profession she finds meaningful. I found this interesting because social sciences are often separated from STEM fields in college, but there are many jobs where proficiency in both is necessary. I also learned from Dr. Book that it is perfectly fine, and sometimes necessary, to stray from the specific academic path you have set for yourself as you discover more about what kind of work you find rewarding. Dr. Book’s decision to pursue data analysis in education instead of continuing in academia was difficult for her, since it involved changing her career direction and having tough conversations with her colleagues, but it was key to finding a career that corresponded with her values.

In addition to our discussion about career paths, I found Dr. Book’s current projects at Boston Public Schools and how she uses certain skills from college and graduate school in her work particularly compelling. She and her team pull, organize, and analyze data on student enrollment in particular schools, programs, and grades. Then they find patterns in data so the district can decide whether more schools or classrooms are needed for a particular neighborhood or program. Throughout the process, data serves as the foundation for important planning conversations at Boston Public Schools. Dr. Book uses this data to communicate a story that engages community members and school district officials. Her work results in outcomes that benefit students, families, and educators. From Dr. Book’s description of her work, I gained an appreciation of data’s importance in supporting education and uplifting communities. All in all, our interview taught me that there are multiple ways you can explore your field of interest, both inside and outside of academia, and the specific path you should choose depends on what you value and find rewarding.

Highlights from the interview:

Everyone’s family, community, and life circumstances create an initial role for them in society. What was expected of you? Did you adhere to it or stray from it?

I think my family always had high expectations for education. I was always a good student. I enjoyed school, and that led well through high school and into college. When I was in college at Rice University, I discovered that you could make a whole career out of being a researcher, and that’s when I decided to go pursue my PhD in sociology at the University of North Carolina (UNC).

While I was at UNC, I thought I was on that path to be a professor, to be an academic researcher, and things were going well. I was again pretty good at it. You say you have certain paths set for you…I got onto that academic path early in graduate school, but it was probably my third or fourth year of my PhD program that I realized that while I really enjoyed sociological research and data-driven study of education, inequality, life course studies, and that kind of thing…I was finding that the value structure and the reward structure in academia was something that I was not enjoying, and that’s the stereotypical “publish or perish.” There’s a huge emphasis on publishing, and I interpreted that a lot of times as publishing for the sake of publishing, and publishing for the prestige of publishing, rather than publishing data or research that could be shared and built on. I much more enjoyed that part of it versus the actual following through and publishing of things. That’s when I had to break from my path.

I had an incredibly supportive mentor throughout my graduate school years, and when I told her I wasn’t sure If I wanted to follow in her footsteps and become a tenured professor, tenured research professor, that was a hard conversation to do, but I’m really glad I did it, because the work I’m doing now much more closely aligns with things I value in terms of what’s rewarded, what’s valued, that kind of thing. And doing research that gets used.

When did you start to envision yourself as a data analyst for your profession? Was there a certain turning point?

I had always been a data analyst in a sense, and that was the part I really enjoyed. I loved our weekly check-ins with both my mentor in undergrad as well as my advisor in grad school. We’d talk about the data; I’d show them the latest regressions I’d run. We would talk through what does this mean, what does this mean. And there was always this sense—I want to build on it, I want to build on it. But the next step would be like okay, well, time to write it into a paper. I didn’t mind the writing of the paper, that was also an interesting exercise, it was having to wait six to 24 months…sending it off to different people. I wanted that instant gratification, almost. Things take time. At least in my role now, I think things are taking time because they’re still being built on in an actionable way versus just a paper floating out, sitting on some other professor’s desk or researcher’s desk, waiting to be reviewed and built on. The process was just too slow for me, and the outcome didn’t seem to be worth all that time for me.

What led you to your current position, and what do you do in your current position?

I was searching for jobs in Boston. I was doing an internet search of one of those—Indeed or LinkedIn—where you can type in keywords and job postings will come up. I typed in the software that I use, which is Stata. It is used a lot in economics and in sociology, as well as other academic fields. It’s statistical software that is akin to R or SAS or these softwares that are more well-known, especially in the nonprofit, government, private sector. I searched for Stata, because that’s what I was good at, that’s what I know how to use. And a job at Boston Public Schools popped up, and I clicked on it. As I’m reading the job description, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this job is perfect for me.” It was using data to explain things, to help identify inequities, et cetera. The job has shifted since the original job description, which is why I’m being a little vague. I saw this and thought, wow, they value someone with a strong quantitative background, but it’s also an organization that’s doing important work every single day and is directly impacting the way we’re serving the students and children of Boston, and so I applied.

What are some of those improvements that you mention your work is doing?

My current role now is I’m on the planning and analysis team at BPS. In summary, the work I do is using data to support short-term and long-term planning in the district around enrollment. We use enrollment data, what students are attending what schools, in certain programs in various grades. We look for patterns in those ways. We provide data on what programs are growing, and we might need to open new classrooms. We also identify what parts of the city have fewer seats relative to the number of students who live there—so there’s a capacity shortage, so that’s where we’d recommend building new schools or opening new classrooms in these areas. That’s just one of the many things our team is doing as part of a larger process. I’m not the one making those decisions, not by far, but I’m pulling the data, and I’m organizing the analyses we’re doing.

Other than your knowledge of Stata, what are some other skills that you find yourself utilizing a lot in your position? How did your college years prepare you?

I think the skills that I learned in college and grad school, as well for a little bit [on the job is]—how to tell a story with data. I think, at the end of the day, that’s what appealed to me about being a professional sociologist or a researcher. And then what is further parlayed into this career being so rewarding for me is interpreting numbers and making it accessible to an audience, whether that’s through writing a memo or a paper as I may have done in college or a presentation that I did in college. Now I’m doing a similar thing. I’m taking data, and I’m helping people understand what the data means. I’m making it accessible to a layperson or somebody who maybe understands a lot more about what’s happening inside of the schools. I can bring them information about enrollment patterns that maybe they had seen to some extent but didn’t really fully understand until I put it in certain ways. I walk people through it, answer their questions. That’s something that’s always really appealed to me.

Are there ever any misconceptions about your profession or about what you do?

I think a lot of people might hear “analyst” and think that we’re doing really high-level, super in-depth statistical analyses all the time and that we’re just in front of our computers all day, not talking to anybody. And there are definitely moments when that’s happening, and I’ll have my scripts running, and they’re super intense, and people are like, “What is that? What are you doing? That’s crazy.” But a lot of what I do is a lot more simple descriptive statistics. I think the power of descriptive statistics and just simple charts can really be powerful. And, as I mentioned earlier, that telling of the story—sometimes the more complicated statistical model that you run isn’t necessarily the most important data that you analyze nor is it necessarily better because it’s more complicated. There’s just an element of analysts being engaged with data and doing analytics, but there is that element of translating it. How do we make it approachable to an audience? And that audience includes people that I work with in the central office, it includes principals, it includes school communities and families…Basically, there’s a lot more to being an analyst, at least in my role, than just being in the data all day long and doing crazy complicated things.

What parts of Boston Public Schools make it a good place to work?

I am constantly in awe of how many smart and capable people I work with. On my own team, I have so much respect for the people I work with, and that makes it fun, it makes it good, makes it a reason to come into work every day. I really respect and value everyone on my team, but then that extends to other people in the central office. There’s really the sense of doing it for the students. The work we’re doing is grounded in schools, and the principals that I get to work with are just some of the most excellent people because they are engaged in making sure their schools are welcoming and rigorous and a place where children can feel safe and learn. So I think being a part of an organization like Boston Public Schools is great because I get to do the work that I enjoy. I’m doing it for an organization that I believe in, in the sense that everyone’s in it for the kids, and I think they’re doing a good job. I mean there’s always room for improvement. BPS, like all urban school districts, faces so many challenges, but I really respect the people I work with. I think that makes it a great place to work.

How are science and technology reshaping your work, and what changes do you foresee in your specific area?

Let’s just say that a lot of the statistical power and data that we have now, we didn’t have 10 years ago. I wasn’t here 10 years ago, but I hear stories of how things were 10 years ago. There was that same, “Oh, we want to be equitable and do things in the best way we can,” but there wasn’t that level of data infrastructure and people around who could interact with it in the same way. So I think the fact that we can run scripts in R and Stata, generate a bunch of tools…that kind of thing wasn’t being done in the district five, 10 years ago. Having the additional machine power behind us has really enabled us to tell the story faster, with more intricate charts and reports. I think our leadership really values data as something that’s really important and valuable, and that’s part of the reason our team has come together and has thrived. We have all this data, we know how to use it, and people in the district value it and value the work we’re doing.

What advice would you give students interested in the field?

I’ll give some broad advice, which is if you have an interest in analysis but you also have an interest in urban education or sociology or insert whatever non-STEM field, I think as data is becoming more and more prevalent, it’s the language that everyone’s using in almost all fields these days. I didn’t even know a job like mine existed when I was in college. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe it’s a newer job. There has been this increase in jobs that use data as the quantity of data has increased. But I think I would challenge or advise students who are interested in this kind of work to also think about where your passions are—I know that’s kind of cliché—because there’s just data and analyses happening in every field. And so, not limiting yourself to working at a tech company or for a consulting firm or something. There are people doing that work in every field, and I think pushing people to think through, “How could I be doing data work in a field that interests me? Or a field that I feel passionate about?” like urban education or whatever thing that is interesting to you. Those jobs are out there, and the numbers are growing, so I encourage students to keep up with the latest trends in data and analyses and the latest software. Data visualization is becoming hugely important, so those kind of skills—brush up on those skills. Think about the industries you might not think about as having roles for data analysts. I bet that they do.

I would want to give students permission to stray from the path that they think that they’re on. If you think your major is setting you up for only a certain type of job, or you think that your interests are only setting you up for a certain type of job, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Network with people and things that you didn’t think you could do with your major. Spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to do, and don’t just stay on the path that someone is laid out for you because you have certain skills or you’ve taken certain classes so far. Obviously, your major and your classes are important, but the longer you’re in a job, the less relevant they become. So if you can establish that you have the skills and the interest in jobs that maybe you didn’t think about before, you’re qualified for more jobs than you probably think. If you spend some time thinking about that and thinking off the path, I think there’s a lot of potential for really cool opportunities out there.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.

Zachary Marx-Kuo
Stanford University
Stanford (37.4° N, 122.1° W)

featuring Eric Li, Senior Product Manager, PeopleGrove, San Francisco (37.7° N, 122.4° W)

I had the pleasure of interviewing Eric Li, and I learned about his experiences in and path into the educational technology (“edtech”) industry. Eric currently serves as a senior product manager at PeopleGrove, a company that connects students to professionals in their fields of interests. Prior to this role, Eric worked at Khan Academy, Spire Education in Kenya, and the Boston Consulting Group. Eric graduated from Rice University with a BA in economics.

During our interview, Eric shared his path into edtech beginning from his own high school days, how he balanced his interests with the expectations of his parents, and a pivotal moment when he decided to leave consulting and pursue careers in education full-time. Eric made this career pivot after reflecting on his values and identifying the ones that he held most dear. Dustin Peterson’s book Reset was instrumental in this process, and Eric realized that his professional life as a consultant did not uphold one of his key values, empowerment. While I’ve heard about the influence of mentors or experiences in shaping some of the major decisions that people make in their lives, this is the first time that someone has cited a book as this motivating force.

We then discussed our personal views on the current and future roles of edtech. As a former teacher and counselor who used various edtech products, I appreciated gaining a behind-the-scenes perspective on what the makers of the products believe their role to be (versus how the products may play out in the classroom). Going into this interview, I expected to hear more from Eric about edtech’s merits and its power moving forward. I was surprised, then, to hear that Eric thought that edtech would not be a major driver in students’ educations for at least the next 50-100 years and that the classroom teacher plays a very important role. He pushed against the idea of technology in classrooms as a silver bullet for the issues in the education system that we see today, despite the rise of screen time for students of all ages in classrooms. Eric highlighted the ability of edtech to empower teachers but how it cannot help them solve certain problems that they’re already facing in the classroom, like students coming to class hungry.

Finally, I appreciated the approach that Eric suggested for someone that has an edtech solution in mind that they would like to pursue. He recommended that this hypothetical inventor empathize with the intended user, focus on understanding the problem before jumping to a solution, and to simply “go for it.” I think this advice could apply to people interested in fields even outside of edtech, as could Eric’s priorities as a growing professional, his eventual move to social impact over consulting, and his open-minded perspective on how to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Highlights from the interview

Could you first talk about your educational journey?

I grew up in a pretty stereotypically “tiger parent” household. In high school, very heavy emphasis on grades, academics, SAT, et cetera. Not as much emphasis on exploration, or curiosity, or that sort of thing. That was the K-12 chapter. In college, I would say that shifted. My focus went far less academic and more towards what I could learn from experiences in hands-on opportunities. There are things I gained from the academic things, but one of the bigger takeaways for me was, I think, the experiences through internship. Getting to chat with professors, with internships at different companies, I really had a lot of valuable understanding about my interests, my passions, my strengths and weaknesses, how I wanted to grow, came from those [interactions]. That’s a quick overview of how I viewed some of my learning and growth.

How did your family feel about some of your choices?

In college, I was prepped to focus a little more on what would be a strong job out of college, what to major in that would set me up for success. I became a lot more pragmatic in college. I wanted to make sure I was setting myself up for a career of success. I had interned in real estate, finance, consulting, tech, and ultimately decided to go into consulting in my first role out of college. I think, coming from a more traditional household and being from a first-generation immigrant family, that represented stability, sort of having reached a certain point. I think, as parents and firs-gen immigrants, that was absolutely something my parents were thrilled and ecstatic about.

Fast forward two years later, when I decided to transition out of consulting into first an education fellowship, then to Khan Academy, and now to PeopleGrove, there was less understanding of why I would leave a stable and well-known company with good pay, et cetera, for a completely different mission and making, on paper, some significant tradeoffs. That has taken them some time to come around to, but they now understand some of my motivations and what I’m solving for…it is less on the prestige side and more on the more tradition social impact and making a difference [side]. And I think that comes from, as I’ve gotten older, appreciating more of the privilege that I did grow up with. And, as I’ve seen more inequality, especially in the educational space, knowing that it would be super easy for me to put my head in the ground and not care about any of that. But with what I’ve seen, I want to be a part of the solution for that rather than upholding an inequitable system and a lot of these disparities.

So when did you feel like you had that shift?

It would probably be my time in Kenya. That’s where I went [with a fellowship] after my two years at the Boston Consulting Group [BCG]. That was a fork in the road where I had been in consulting for a little while but was ready to think about something else. When I thought about making more of a meaningful impact with my career, considering all my gifts and advantages growing up, I realized that education was the common thread in a lot of the volunteering work and things that I spent my time on. It was always teaching in some way, mentoring in some way, creating resources for people to use. I had always thought of it as a hobby, as a side gig, but at that point I said, “Why don’t I try it out full-time? Learn more about the field, the industry, the opportunity. See if I can make a difference.” At the end of that time, I had the option of coming back to BCG or going elsewhere, and I chose to continue along the path in education, which led me to Khan Academy for four years and ultimately where I am now.

Did you have anyone that was helpful in terms of helping you to follow that path? Making the switch from consulting to education.

I don’t know if there was one particular person. I think it was taking that risk of leaving consulting, going on that fellowship in that time—in a very different environment, different culture, different company—that honestly got me out of a little bit of a bubble of consulting and allowed me to consider a lot broader set of opportunities and possibilities. I think the environment in taking that risk, trying something else, opened my mind to differences.

The second thing was—towards the end of that fellowship when I was at another crossroads of either going back to the life I led or continuing—there actually was a book that was pivotal in making my decision. It was by Dustin Peterson, who was a former Rice professor, and his book was called Reset. What spoke to me at that point was an exercise in the book that had 10-15 values that you had to weigh against each other, and when I took a values first kind of approach, it was very clear what the decision was going to be, and where I needed to go, and that led me to education. The empowerment was the top value I had at the time and still is probably up there. I think education, and probably a few other things, are among the most empowering things that we can give to people to better their lives and the family, the society.

Could you tell me a little about your current work?

I am currently a senior product manager at PeopleGrove. PeopleGrove’s mission is to ensure every student and alumni has the connections and mentorship that they need to succeed and achieve their goals. I think we all know that having a connection, whether it’s a friend at the right time, a mentor, a recruiter, or someone you know at an institution or company you want to be at, can often make all the difference in whether you are able to enter and step through and get an opportunity. The work I do at PeopleGrove is to build products that support this mission of making these connections far more accessible than they otherwise might be. So, I’m thinking about how do I help students at universities across the country, and across the world, have a tool that can allow someone to easily reach out to alumni at companies, or mentors that might help them both in college and once they graduate, through internship, jobs, advice, et cetera, so it’s working with engineers and designers to build a product that facilitates that.

Let’s talk about some of the skills that you find yourself using in this role.

One is strategic thinking. Two is problem solving. Three would be communication.

I think it starts with strategy, and understanding what is the mission of the organization, what is my role in that, and what data do I know about the problem, about the challenges, et cetera, so that I can create a game plan that will move the needle in achieving the mission, be feasible, reasonable, et cetera.

The second part is problem solving. Every day might bring a different challenge, with a different person, constraint, et cetera, so being able to think about whatever problem and create a plan to resolve it, work with people, et cetera, is something I do everyday.

The third part is communicating. You might have the best plan, the best strategy in the world, but if you don’t know how to communicate effectively to get buy-in from your peers, from superiors, from the rest of the company, you can never just do it on your own. So knowing how to communicate efficiently to show your ways of thinking, get folks on board, and inspire them to work in that direction, is important.

What motivated the recent shift over here?

One definite factor was a desire to increase how much and how fast I was learning. Having been at a place for four years is a good chunk of time, so after four years I started to have some déjà vu of, “Oh, I recognize this problem. I’ve seen this before. I’ve done this before.” Making sure that my learning kept accelerating where I could own a significant part of a product that I believed in was really important to me.

Could you give an example of a project that you felt like, at the beginning of your work, was really exciting?

The best example I would give is this project that I led twice over two years called LearnStorm. LearnStorm was this big back-to-school marketing campaign with a great end-product experience that really supercharged it. LearnStorm was designed to one, be a really exciting, motivating thing for teachers to use to get their students excited about [going] back to school. Two, to help teachers build strong learning mindsets at the start of a school year, so to set the tone so that students aren’t saying things like, “I’m just not a math person. I wasn’t born that way.” So that they have more of a growth mindset. And three, it was designed to help teachers to bring their students back up after a summer of probably not learning a lot and forgetting a lot. This campaign was something that, as a marketer, I redesigned from the ground up, to make it simpler, much more helpful for a teacher. And then, as a product manager, made the end-product experience much more engaging, intuitive, seamless. And at the end of the day, after two years of this, we had grown the program from about a quarter million, at its inception, to over a million students. We quadrupled the number of teachers using it and delivered a lot more learning to students, and so Khan Academy’s company-wide metric that we care most about is, “How many students are using Khan Academy at least two hours a month or about 30 minutes a week?” This program was one of the biggest contributors in driving a huge increase in the number of students who used us extensively every month.

The reason we care about that deep usage is that we have efficacy studies that show if you use this for at least two hours, you get higher than expected academic gains, and this project drove about half the increase in classroom….really engaged classroom usage during my time there. So that was one where I cared a lot about what it meant for Khan Academy, what it meant for students. And a lot of the stories and videos we saw were great as well; you had students asking their teachers to assign them work on Khan Academy during recess, you had students with really inspiring stories about how they learned differently going from a fixed mindset to “You haven’t learned this yet. You can do this. It just takes some support, a different strategy, et cetera,” so that would absolutely one of my proudest achievements and projects at Khan Academy.

Let’s imagine that I called you in a month, saying, “I graduated. I have this idea. I am working with some friends, and we have this product, and we’re going to get the ball rolling.” What do you think would be the top three things that you would say? Like, “Zach, this looks great, but I want you to be thinking about X, Y, and Z.”

Three things I would say would be…One, know your consumer. Know your user forward, backwards, sideways; know them extremely well. Number two, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. And number three, go for it.

So, number one, know your user very well. Before you start with any idea or pitch or concept, you need to have that consumer or user in mind. You need to know what they care about, what their challenges are, what they currently do about those challenges, and what motivates or frustrates them. Because at the end of the day, you’re doing this for, presumably, a human, and you’re not building a bot to serve other AI bots or something. That would be step number one.

Advice number two would be fall in love with the problem, not the solution. I think, often in startups, you might think, “Aw, this is the killer idea. This very first idea I came up with, no one else has ever come up with it.” Ninety-nine percent chance you’re wrong, but if you flip it and fixate less on the solution and more on “This is the problem, or [this is the] impact I hope to make for this user or for society,” then you’ll start to be a little more data driven and customer driven, and understanding “Hey, this is my first idea, but here’s my second hypothesis, here’s my third hypothesis,” and you really want to be more scientific with it. To test what idea and solution really does solve the problem that you care about for the person that you care about.

The third part is go for it. If you are fortunate to have some of that support…I think responsibilities and things only grow with time, and, as a new graduate, this is a great point in time—an opportunity to learn with an idea that you care about. Few things feel as motivating and inspiring as working on something you truly believe in.

For edtech companies, do you think a for-profit model is better than a nonprofit model for increasing access?

I would say that the number of students, the size and scale of problems in education in the US and around the world…there’s plenty of room for both kinds of models. I don’t think success is driven or dependent on what model you pick. I think it’s a lot more dependent on the strategy. Are you focused on your execution over the course of years and years? Because education isn’t as fast as ad optimization on Instagram. You can’t run a one-week experiment on a kid and say, “He’s going to Harvard now. Great, we solved it.” And so I think what it more depends on is are you focused on the user—teachers, students, districts? Are you able to partner with some of the largest institutions and players with governments, with states, with common-core curricular, et cetera? And do you have a model that has a way to sustain yourself? I’ve seen for-profits fail; I’ve seen nonprofits fail. I’ve seen organizations in both categories succeed. I think it comes down much more to strategy, user focus, and your execution over a very, very long time, rather than simplifying it to for-profit or non-profit. I would also say, for access, it again depends. Khan Academy had 15 million students on it a month, and that was all around the world. It is completely free, so I would say yeah, you probably have some prep school kids on it, but you also have people in the Middle East or in refugee camps, so I wouldn’t say it limited the access in any way, especially internationally. It absolutely increased access there but not because it was nonprofit, per se.

Do you ever see the role of edtech changing classrooms, so the vast majority of classrooms are not directed by a teacher? A more blended-learning style, like Khan Lab?

I think there will always be a role for a teacher, and for the classroom, and for other students. I don’t believe a tech-only solution is viable in the next 50 years or 100 years. And even if it is viable, I would argue it’s not…I wouldn’t recommend it, because technology can be very good at certain things, but the social aspects of learning, the emotional aspects of learning—learning resilience, learning perseverance, all of that—would be missing. I think tech can make some aspects of learning easier, but I think the most holistic, best education would probably be a strong combination where a teacher is equipped with tools so that they can serve their student, wherever their student is. So I think things like a blended classroom, personalized learning, competency-based learning, there’s room for all of these. But at the end of the day, it needs to be in service of empowering the teacher, empowering the student, not just saying, “If 100 percent of people used this, it would magically solve everything,” because MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] have been around for well over a decade now, and I don’t think we have seen universities disappear or a decrease in importance. You have started to see some impact on the market, where probably there is more resources and things online, but I wouldn’t advise or recommend it. I don’t think it’s feasible that it will be 100 percent purely online learning any time soon.

What are some challenges that edtech, or PeopleGrove, is facing?

I’ll start with these two. I’ll see if there are any others. One is having a sustainable model that balances student needs and teachers’ needs with having something that scales, whether that’s for-profit or non-profit. Improving student outcomes and success and teacher outcomes and success, you cannot pay bills with that, so there’s an inherent push and pull with any company nonprofit that is trying to serve students, so I’d say that is one where it, again, comes down to execution over a long period of time, and the aspiration would be to do so in such a way that doesn’t make you almost a rent-accruing entity within the system. I don’t know what the solution is, actually, so I won’t try to say it, but ideally, you don’t turn into a behemoth that is exacting profits from the millions and millions of students; you are still primarily in the service to student outcomes, achievements, success, et cetera.

Challenge number two in edtech is that we could use a lot more teachers with firsthand education experience. I think right now you still have largely a world of technology people trying to solve education problems, rather than educators using technology to solve educators’ problems. I saw this at Khan Academy; it’s the case here. I am part of this. I had taught in the past but not in a traditional classroom setting, and I don’t have 10 years of university experience. I think that will always be a barrier to understanding who you are serving and doing as good a job as you can, if you don’t have a critical mass of teachers in senior and important roles within a company.

Number three, I would say, is that education…and this is more just a comment on education in general…but it’s the education to employment gap. It’s all fine and good to get a great GPA, have a great major and college experience, but if at the end of the day that isn’t getting you to the career or post-school goal that you want, then you might’ve just graduated with a lot of debt—not the job or means of providing for yourself that you wanted. I think that is a big challenge and what initially drew me to education, because improving academic outcomes for their own sake is good in certain contexts, but at the end of the day, I think education should be in service of the goals the student or individual has. I think today’s schools, universities, are doing a very poor job of adapting to changes in what the market needs, what companies want, preparing students for employment—that whole category of things. One of the biggest challenges that I think…technology is accelerating that. In a world, if automated trucks become a thing, you suddenly have 10 million people you need to reskill. In a world where more jobs are automated, the skills that we are giving students now don’t matter, then, if they’re not prepared for what the market needs.

What advice would you give to a student interested in getting into your field?

Getting into edtech? I would say get good at the ed and/or the tech, ideally both. And get firsthand experience to see if this is really what you want to do. The ed side is the teaching classroom experience, tech being something in engineering design or being a PM. Experience it with internships, or jobs, or opportunities that you have. You can also talk to [people]; do informational interviews and get more insights that way as well.

I would say, maybe, if I’m giving advice to undergrads or students right now, it would be think about the values that matter most to you, the problems in the world that best align with that, and how you want to make a difference. Reach out to your colleagues, professors, et cetera, who can help you on that journey, and don’t get caught up too much in other pressures and expectations and things. But I think if you start there, it’ll help you find what you want to do a little bit faster.

Interview excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity and readability and approved by the interviewee.