Personalized Learning Initiative: Transcend
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: Transcend.
Transcend is a national nonprofit dedicated to accelerating innovation in the core design of “school.” They partner with school operators across the district, charter and independent sectors through the R&D journey of redesigning school models focused on more personalized approaches to education, offer R&D capacity support, and quickly replicate their successes. Transcend accelerates innovation in school model design, to far better prepare students and society for the 21st century.
They do this in three ways: 1) build and spread innovative models in partnership with visionary school communities, 2) build and deploy a diverse force of R&D talent, called the Yellow Hats League, to develop, codify and spread these new learning models, and 3) build and share actionable knowledge to inform the innovation process with evidence-based insights.
About Jeff Wetzler
Jeff is a Co-Founder of Transcend Education. Prior to co-founding Transcend, Jeff spent a decade in senior leadership roles at Teach For America, a national nonprofit dedicated to educational opportunity for all children. For the majority of that time, Jeff served as EVP of Teacher Preparation, Support, and Development and Chief Learning Officer, where his teams focused on optimizing the training and ongoing support of TFA’s thousands of corps members nationally. Before that, Jeff worked at Monitor Group, an international consulting firm, where he focused on adult and organizational development and created a technology product to extend the impact of learning experiences. Jeff was a founding board member of Leadership Prep Charter Schools and currently serves on the boards of Uncommon Schools NYC, New Classrooms Innovation Partners, and the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education. For the past two years, Jeff has also served as a design advisor to the Achievement First Greenfield School innovation project.
About Aylon Samouha
Aylon is a Co-Founder of Transcend Education. Prior to co-founding Transcend, Aylon was an independent designer providing strategy and design services to education organizations, schools, and foundations. Most recently, Aylon has been leading the “Greenfield” school model design for the Achievement First Network, which is being piloted in the 2015-16 school year. He also led the field research for Charter School Growth Fund and the Clay Christensen Institute for the 2014 publication, “Schools and Software: What’s Now, What’s Next”. In 2013, Aylon pioneered the Chicago Breakthrough Schools Fellowship in conjunction with New Schools for Chicago, NGLC, and the Broad Foundation. After graduating from Columbia University with a BA in English, Aylon spent the first part of his career at Score Educational Centers working with families, leading K-8 learning centers and ultimately managing 60+ branches across the country.
Follow @TranscendBuilds @aylonsamouha & @jeffreywetzler to keep up with Transcend Builds!