Personalized Learning Initiative: PowerMyLearning
The Personalized Learning Initiative, which is led by New Profit Partner Trevor Brown, is an effort to invest in promising new approaches and technologies that can give students more agency in their own learning journey and provide teachers with tools to tailor classroom instruction to the unique needs of each student. As part of this four-year initiative, seven selected organizations will each receive an unrestricted grant of $1 million. Today we celebrate one of the seven selected organizations: PowerMyLearning.
PowerMyLearning brings 1) a comprehensive school based partnership model reaching 41 high-poverty schools, 2) PowerMyLearning Connect is an award-planning digital learning platform reaching more than 40% of US public schools, and 3) a network membership of 70 organizations that care about advancing Personalized Learning. PowerMyLearning is a national non-profit organization committed to ensuring that all children are able to power their learning through a combination of technology and the people who matter most to their success – parents and teachers. They partner with schools serving low-income communities and provide professional development for educators and family engagement services. Underlying their work is PowerMyLearning Connect, their award-winning free digital platform that already has registered users in more than 40% of public school communities across the nation and is growing fast. Additionally, they lead the PowerMyLearning Network, a multidimensional learning community of innovative partners who believe in the power of digital learning to strengthen the learning relationships among students, teachers, and families.
About Elisabeth Stock
Elisabeth is the CEO and Co-Founder of PowerMyLearning. Elisabeth Stock built PowerMyLearning from a nascent non-profit in 1999 into a national leader in the K-12 digital learning space. Recognized as an expert in her field, Elisabeth is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow and a life-long Ashoka fellow. She has given a TEDx talk and high-level briefings at the White House, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Federal Communications Commission, and she has served as an advisor to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the NYC Department of Education. Elisabeth has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio and has published Op-Eds in media outlets such as Education Week and the Huffington Post. In 2001, she was honored by Crain’s New York Business as one of 40 New Yorkers under 40 shaping the city. From 1996-97, Elisabeth served as a White House Fellow in the Office of the Vice President, where her experience as the principal architect of a government-wide education technology program led her to launch PowerMyLearning a year later. Elisabeth was a high school teacher for two years while a Peace Corps volunteer and later worked for the World Bank on appropriate technology in Africa. She also worked at the Vera Institute of Justice and helped the Open Society Institute start the After-School Corporation. Elisabeth served as a member of the MIT Board of Trustees (1997-2002) and is the youngest individual ever to be appointed to the MIT Executive Committee (2000-2002). Elisabeth has earned four degrees from MIT. She also holds a patent for a medical device.
About Mark Malaspina
Mark is the President of PowerMyLearning. Mark is responsible for driving PowerMyLearning’s program innovations and research agenda and for deepening PowerMyLearning’s relationships with school districts, software partners, and education organizations. Since joining PowerMyLearning in May 2009, Mark has led the development of PowerMyLearning Connect, PowerMyLearning’s K-12 learning platform, and he has overseen major enhancements to PowerMyLearning’s partnership program with high poverty middle schools. As the former President of The Grow Network, an education company he co-founded in 2000 and sold to McGraw-Hill in 2004, Mark brings strong experience in education to this role. Under Mark’s leadership, Grow served more than 20 million students in the U.S. and internationally and demonstrated its impact in differentiated instruction and parent engagement through studies by nationally recognized research organizations, such as the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for Children & Technology. At Grow, Mark helped develop a patented analytical system that infers students’ strengths and needs in order to support effective instruction. Mark also has broad experience working with low-income communities. As a Skadden Fellow at the Lawyers Alliance for New York, Mark provided guidance to local organizations developing innovative economic development programs in low-income neighborhoods. Since 2000, he has served on the board of the New York City Financial Network Action Consortium, a CDFI Intermediary that supports community development credit unions. Previously, Mark has worked with public housing tenant organizations in Atlanta and New Haven and helped establish small business lending programs in Chicago. He served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Coto Brus, Costa Rica, and is fluent in Spanish. After receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School, Mark clerked for Judge Phyllis Kravitch on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He also has an M.P.A. in Economics and Public Policy from Princeton University and a B.A. from Yale College, where he received the Hadley Prize for outstanding scholarship in the Social Sciences.
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