For the past seven years, Mandela Schumacher-Hodge has dedicated her life to improving both the educational outcomes of students, as well as the professional opportunities for educators.
Beginning her career in 2008 as a Teach for America corps member in South Central Los Angeles, Mandela was quickly promoted as Lead Teacher in her second teaching position. After obtaining a Masters Degree in Education Administration and Policy, Mandela was admitted into one of the nation’s top Ph.D. education programs at UCLA.
In 2011, Mandela co-founded Tioki, the “The LinkedIn for Educators.” Funded by Kapor Capital, 500 Startups, and Imagine K12, Tioki empowered educators in 28 countries around the world with the resources, tools,
and network to affect change in schools and beyond.
Currently, Mandela is the Director of Startup Education, the largest grassroots initiative in the world dedicated to fostering education innovation. Having expanded to over 25 cities in 5 continents, Startup Education gives everyone, everywhere a unique opportunity to play a leading role in shaping the future of education.
In January 2014, Mandela was named to the 2014 Forbes “30 Under 30 in Education” list, a distinction that recognizes her influential accomplishments at the intersection of education, technology and entrepreneurship. She has had the opportunity to share the vision of utilizing technology, entrepreneurship, and community-building as a means to improve education outcomes at such events as the Bill & Melinda Gates Symposium, Facebook’s Female Entrepreneurship Initiative, and LAUNCH Edu.
Latimer has a resume that staggers not only the world’s top illusionists, but most academic professionals as well. With an adept gift for excelling in science across multiple fields and more awards for performances before the age of thirty than
many accumulate in a lifetime, Jason Latimer has defined himself as truly one of a kind.
Latimer’s incredible academic background embraces multiple fields. Jason’s resume includes Economics, Mathematics, and Applied Physics coupled with awards and articles for his research in Psychology. Taking his extensive background and applying it to his passion of understanding mystery has led to three World Champion of Magic titles and an astonishing seventeen consecutive championship wins and awards for his performances. Latimer’s television shows, live appearances, and university lectures on his personal pursuit of wonder are globally inspiring the public’s imagination to “Question the Impossible.”
As a child Jason traded magic books for science books. He began uniting all sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, psychology, etc.) into one playing field to have a better understanding of the world. With this foundation he has stolen the spotlight on multiple occasions as “one of magic’s most gifted creators” (Genii Magazine). Latimer’s work has developed such effects as shaping water into solid forms and popping them, bending laser beams with his bare hands, animating art on his own skin or teleporting people across time and space and many other amazing effects. By combining technology with performance, humor, psychology, choreography, and pure sleight of hand skill with science Latimer is ushering in a new era of magic on an unprecedented level.
Shawn Bay is one of the originators of data warehousing. As CEO and Founder of eScholar, Mr. Bay leads the company’s vision to enable the education community to use data to improve education outcomes and achieve dreams.
Mr. Bay founded eScholar to provide data systems to K-12 school districts and state education agencies in an affordable, reliable and continually evolving way. By working closely with educators to support the data needs of their initiatives, Mr. Bay has gained extensive knowledge and experience in data quality issues, data sources and
successful approaches to applying data to improve education.
He holds a Masters Degree in business administration and an undergraduate degree in economics. Mr. Bay began his career as a Marketing Analyst at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati and advanced to lead Information Systems for the Unilever PLC food business in the United States. Mr. Bay founded the parent company of eScholar LLC, a data warehousing consulting firm in 1992.
