Our Team
Alex Grodd (Founder & CEO) is a Teach For America alum who taught 6th grade English at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School. He founded BetterLesson to address the challenges he faced in the classroom.
Jonathan Hendler (CTO) is dedicated to adapting best-of-breed technologies to applications with a social mission; balancing strategic consideration and engineering integrity.
Erin Osborn (Director of Operations) finds hope in the eagerness of inspired students. She comes from the halls of Cambridge Public Schools and the mean streets of Ed Reform organizing.
Andrew Drane (Senior Web Developer) joined BetterLesson in early 2009 with 5 years of web development experience from both his own startup and consulting with a diverse range of clients.
David Miranda (Web Programmer) thinks a lot about how people interact with websites and technology. He's excited about working at a startup that has a chance to change the world.
Yevy Spivak (Sr. Software Engineer) searches for technological solutions to social problems and hopes his work at BetterLesson will help more kids realize the value of education.
Zach Bialecki (Web Programmer) spends his time finding new and exciting engineering challenges to solve. He also enjoys playing with the latest web technologies and open source projects.
Matthew Lenard (Director of Research) taught middle school social studies in Atlanta and can't wait to watch his former students graduate from high school.
Christopher Cullen (Community Manager) taught 6th grade science at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School and is now Community Director for BetterLesson. Please accept his colleague request.
Kelsey Bunce (Office Manager) is a recent interdisciplinary college graduate dedicated to education reform and great ideas like BetterLesson!
Will Blattner (Intern) is excited to be entering his second year at BetterLesson and is thrilled to work with the whole team!
Board Member
Thank you icon designers
BetterLesson uses icons from these icon sets:
- 280north and SOFA’s Aristo
- Brandon Mathis’ Fancy Avatars
- Mark James’ FAMFAMFAM icon sets
- FatCow’s “Farm Fresh Web Icons”
- Pixel Mixer’s Basic Set
- IconEden's Fresh icon set
About BetterLesson
BetterLesson was founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public schools to connect educators and help them create, organize, and share their curricula.
We are focused on aggregating and scaling the most innovative content and practices from high-performing teachers across the country.
Core Principles
Every educator – regardless of school location, resources, or demographics – should have access to the best instructional content in the world.
Real Recognition
A good lesson is a creative achievement. Lesson creators should receive real recognition for their original works.
Curriculum Matters
A high-quality curriculum (180 high-quality lessons in a row) drives student achievement.
Collaboration
Sustained collaboration is fundamental to the creation and delivery of the highest quality instruction.
Proud to be a Boston Startup!
We’re incredibly thankful to be building our company in Boston. We’re especially thankful for the consistent advice and moral support from our neighboring startups:
Viximo:
Viximo is the easiest way to drive revenue and engagement with virtual goods and currency. They are also our very generous landlords. We’re extremely grateful to Sean, Brian, and the whole team for their warm hospitality and eclectic music tastes.
OfficeDrop:
OfficeDrop is a digital filing system and document scanning service that helps small businesses manage both paper and digital documents. We frequently recommend OfficeDrop to teachers to help them digitize their curricula.
FollowUp.cc:
FollowUp.cc is a simple email reminder service that helps people get their inbox to zero - and fits into their workflow. Chris has been a great BetterLesson advisor from the beginning.
Shareaholic:
Shareaholic is fanatical about making people more productive by making sharing easy. It’s installed in our browsers and saves us a lot of time and energy when sharing content.
Baydin:
Baydin makes email clients smarter by offering innovative Outlook pluggins that help with automatic search and follow up.
YouCastr:
YouCastr is an easy and simple way to sell video online. YouCastr makes it simple for anyone to sell live broadcasts, on demand streams, downloads and DVDs to make real money.
