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.