Charles founded Civitas Learning to transform educational outcomes using big data analytics. He discovered a passion for education while teaching high school students on the weekends during his undergraduate days at Stanford, and upon graduating translated that passion into the founding of multiple education start-ups. These early ventures included ClickSafety.com, an online safety training company, and Testakers.com, the first rich-media, diagnostic and prescriptive test prep tutoring application online. In 2002 his business was acquired by Kaplan, where he spent the next nine years as an in-house entrepreneur, launching several edtech businesses in the K12 and higher education markets.

Charles is a two-time CODiE Award recipient for excellence in software development and a former director on the Education Board of the Software & Information Industry Association. He is also named on the “16 People Changing the Landscape of Online Education Forever” list by Find Education Online. He is a frequent speaker at education events around the country, when he is not home in Austin, TX enjoying the outdoors with his wife and two young sons.

Equal parts entrepreneur and educator, John is a servant leader working to solve persistent problems in and around K-12 education through grass-roots innovation. He founded ImpactLab to help current and former teachers develop their insights into sustainable, high-impact programs and ventures. ImpactLab's Enterprise Incubator kicks off its second cohort March 14.

Before starting ImpactLab, John was founder and CEO of PowerIT, a SaaS providing communications and operational solutions to schools and associations in 25 states. Previously, he founded The History Lab ®, an online lesson tool adopted by the US Library of Congress, The New Curriculum, an online edtech journal, and a statewide edtech conference for K-12 teachers. Before all of this, John taught high school history and political philosophy in New York and Connecticut for six years.

John is a national speaker on the topics of fostering innovation in education, expanding educational equity and building capacity and entrepreneurial mindset in our nation's teachers.