LiFT co-founders Josie and David met 20 years ago while teaching in a rural Vermont public school.

As an English teacher, Josie specialized in creating an atmosphere of belonging, trust, and personal connection with her students. She launched many new and bold out-of-the box learning opportunities to make learning fun, meaningful, and deep.

David worked as an educator and clinician providing mental health services to youth who had experienced trauma. He specialized in building trust and self-confidence as keys to growth, emotional regulation and health.

In the midst of this meaningful work, spurred by the joy of parenting their three young children, they began to grapple with systemic issues, in particular, the absence of student voice, choice, passion and purpose in secondary education.

Josie and David began to imagine a tool that would make it easier for educators to build learning pathways filled with inspiration, motivation, and rigor. Positive feedback from stakeholders led them to take the leap as entrepreneurs with the launch of SchoolHack Solutions and the release of the LiFT prototype in 2015.

From 2016-2019, the SchoolHack team innovated alongside dozens of early adopter schools across the country to understand and solve the thorniest day-to-day problems of learner-centered practice. Along with these courageous educators, key partnerships included the Tennessee Department of Education, Next Generation Learning Challenge, and the Learn Launch Accelerator.

LiFT gradually evolved into what it is today - a robust, end-to-end learning platform engineered specifically to accommodate all the many models of project- and competency-based learning that are transforming the educational system today.

In 2019, Josie knew it was time for her to return to her teaching roots. She continues to advise and inspire the team as they take the the LiFT software forward under the company’s new name, LiFT Learning.

During the pandemic, we supported our schools' transition to online learning, and focused deeply on building out the entire suite of LMS features required for full-system supports. The R&D brought LiFT to new levels of clarity, reliability, usability and effectiveness. 

As we continue to support the success of an increasing number and variety of organizations from schools to districts to charter networks, new partnerships are emerging to envision the future of education and the learning technology to support it . Please reach out to join the coalition of thought partners, researchers and implementation partners to show the world what's possible when we put the learners first.