By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe
The fourth quarter of 2022 was a little bit quieter for the education marketplace than earlier in the year, but there was still a lot of activity.
ISTE and ASCD Merge
One of the top pieces of news from this fall was the announcement that the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) will merge, beginning in January. ISTE’s current CEO Richard Culatta will lead the new joint organization. While the two groups will continue to host their own conferences for the time being, Culatta said that a new name for the combined association will be announced in spring 2023. How’s that for a big change that has the potential to impact your future marketing and conference plans?
Here are some other market highlights from Q4 2022:
- Carnegie Learning appointed Suzanne Simons new chief literacy and ELL officer.
- Promethean acquired the whiteboard platform Explain Everything.
- CYPHER LEARNING named Jennifer Geisler as chief marketing officer and Matt Kane as chief revenue officer.
- Braintrust Tutors appointed Jon Small as chief revenue officer and Eric Hoffman as vice president of sales and marketing.
- Cambium Learning Group appointed Kemi Akinsanya-Rose as COO.
- The nonprofit assessment developer, Council for Aid to Education, Inc., named Michael Woods as vice president of business development.
- AASA, The School Superintendents Association, selected David R. Schuler as its new executive director, replacing Daniel A. Domenech, who will retire in February 2023.
- Panorama Education named Jessica Tiwari as chief product officer and Andrew Ting as chief legal officer.
- Lex Bayer is the new CEO at Quizlet.
- PowerSchool announced the promotion of CFO Eric Shander, to president and CFO. Tony Kender joined the company as chief revenue officer.
- Reach Capital named Steve Kupfer as a venture partner and Tony Wan, former managing editor at EdSurge, as head of platform.
- School Specialty acquired Chicago-based SchoolKidz, a provider of school supply kitting solutions for elementary and middle school students.
- 7 Mindsets named Mark Belles CEO.
- Michele Chang joined Strada Education Network as chief strategy officer.
- Littera Education acquired Tutor Matching Service and GoBoard.
- Mathnasium named Michael Davis CEO and Michael Stanfield as chief marketing officer.
- Zen Educate, a marketplace that matches schools with teachers, raised $21M to fuel U.S. expansion.
- KIRKBI A/S, the investment company of the LEGO brand, and BrainPOP announced they entered into a definitive agreement for KIRKBI to acquire 100 percent ownership of BrainPOP.
- Education Commission of the States named Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson as chairman, where he says he will focus on expanding computer science education.
- Google acquired K-12 data and analytics company BrightBytes.
- GoGuardian added Ya Xu, vice president of engineering and head of data and AI at LinkedIn , to its board of directors.
- Digital learning company Age of Learning named Ty West as chief revenue officer, schools division.
- Thoma Bravo announced the completion of its sale of Frontline Education to Roper Technologies, Inc. in an all-cash transaction that values Frontline at approximately $3.725 billion.
- Tract, a platform that lets kids create educational content for other kids, raised $7 million in seed funding.
We’ll all be ringing in 2023 before long and we are looking forward to the exciting things the New Year will bring. If the last few years have taught us anything it’s that predicting the future is risky. However, it is safe to say our education marketplace will remain robust and evolving and we’ll continue to bring you the highlights every quarter in 2023.
Happy New Year!
Lisa Wolfe is the president of L. Wolfe Communications. Founded in April 2000, L. Wolfe Communications offers its clients a network of senior, experienced public relations executives with a variety of complementary experience and expertise in public relations and communications for the education and library markets.
