From the Classroom to a Tech Startup
Alicia Herald claims that she is neither a natural born teacher nor a natural born entrepreneur, yet when she noticed the need for a technology platform that matches teachers with value aligned schools her mentor asked her to take the lead. Alicia is the founder of myEDmatch, launched in October of 2012, they have raised $2.89M in angel and Series A investment. In 2015, St. Louis Business Journal named myEDmatch the Most Innovative Company in Education. Alicia’s path toward education reform started when a friend convinced her to meet with a Teach For America recruiter at her university’s bakery…watch to hear more about her inspiring career.
Points of interest
- Teacher turnover has more to do with job fit then low salary and hard work (most teachers know what they are signing up for after all)
- How does someone with no computer science background launch a tech start-up?
- The education gap in America is wide but there is plenty of room for technological innovation in a system critical to addressing injustice in this country
Alicia was the first speaker at the Journey to Social entrepreneurship virtual summit hosted the week of January 18th, 2016. The recordings are available at the link below.
Access other #Journey2SocEnt Speakers
It’s great to see a unique blend of technology and education come together to fill a need in a system. I really enjoyed this presentation, and I was overly impressed with Alicia’s story. Particularly her honesty about the challenges of getting the education system to adopt an innovative tech based model. Not all systems are ready for change. Sometimes we need to move forward despite that and work with the early adopters.