ADVISORY COUNCIL
Ray McNulty
President, Successful Practices Network
Raymond J. McNulty is the President of the National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC), and the Successful Practices Network SPN). He is a past President of the International Center for Leadership in Education. Prior to that, Ray was Dean for the School of Education at Southern New Hampshire University which Fast Company magazine named the 12th most innovative organization in the world in its World's 50 Most Innovative Companies. Ray has served as Chair of the National Dropout Prevention Network and was the Chief Learning Officer for Penn Foster a global leader in online education. Ray also was a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he worked with leading educators on improving our nation's high schools. Ray is a past president of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and author of It’s Not Us Against Them — Creating the Schools We Need, published in 2009 by the International Center.
An educator since 1973, Ray has been a teacher, vice principal, principal, and superintendent. From 2001-03, he served as Vermont's education commissioner. During his tenure, Ray focused on aligning the Department of Education's work on three key issues: early education, educator quality, and secondary school reform.
Ray is a presenter at the state, national, and international levels on the need for school systems to accept the challenges that lie ahead. He is committed to raising performance standards for both teachers and students and to building solid connections between schools and their communities. Ray believes strongly that education systems cannot wait for the children and challenges to arrive at school; rather, schools need to reach out and help forge solutions.
Dana Mortenson
Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, World Savvy
Dana is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit working to educate and engage youth as responsible global citizens. World Savvy supports change agents in K-12 education to create more inclusive, adaptive schools that ensure all young people can develop the skills and dispositions needed to thrive in a more diverse, interconnected world. World Savvy programs provide support at three critical levels to deeply integrate global competence into teaching, learning and culture: student engagement, teacher capacity, and school and district leadership support. Since 2002 she has led the organization through significant national expansion, reaching nearly 750,000 middle and high school youth and over 6,000 educators across 38 states and 28 countries, from offices based in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and New York.
Dana is an Ashoka Fellow, was named one of The New Leaders Council’s 40 under 40 Progressive American Leaders, and was winner of the Tides Foundation’s Jane Bagley Lehman award for excellence in public advocacy in 2014. She is a frequent speaker on global education and social entrepreneurship at high profile convenings nationally and internationally, and World Savvy’s work has been featured on PBS, The New York Times, Edutopia and a range of local and national media outlets covering education and innovation.
Ben Owens
Chief Innovation Engineer, Open Way Learning
Ben Owens spent a 20 year career as a mechanical engineer with a multinational corporation before becoming a public school STEM teacher at a wall-to-wall PBL school in rural Appalachia. Ben left the classroom after 11 years to co-found and lead an education nonprofit that uses the Design Process to help schools create the cultural conditions where authentic, learner-innovation can thrive, especially for students who have historically been furthest from opportunity. He is also the co-author of Open Up, Education!, a book that makes a compelling case for why our schools must be more open and nimble if they are to truly prepare students for a rapidly changing world.
Ben is an Open Organization Ambassador with opensource.com; the recipient of the 2017 Bridging the Gap Distinguished Teacher in STEM Education; the 2016 North Carolina Center for Science, Mathematics, & Technology Outstanding 9-16 Educator Award; was a member of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Teacher Advisory Council; a 2014 Hope Street Group National Teaching Fellow; a routine “Community TA” for the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, and a current National Faculty member with PBLWorks.
Jean Hammond
Co-Founder, LearnLaunch
Jean is an active angel investor, a co-founder of the Boston forum of Golden Seeds (which invests in women-managed businesses) and a member of Launchpad Venture Group and Hub Angels. An investor with an active portfolio of over 50 companies, she has served on the Board or as a Board-level advisor with over 20 of these firms.
Helping drive the support ecosystem by matching entrepreneurs with investors and other resources, Jean meets with hundreds of entrepreneurs a year. As a part-time entrepreneur-in-residence at the E Center and an active mentor at TCN, TechStars, and MassChallenge, she has directly or indirectly helped dozens of startups, moving them from “idea stage” to “funding-ready” to eventual launch to become vital members of the Massachusetts innovation economy.
Most recently, Jean co-founded LearnLaunch, a non-profit fostering the creation and growth of learning and education technology companies and the ed tech business cluster across New England. LearnLaunch brings together innovators, K-12 and higher ed educators, investors, students, school leaders, buyers and distribution channels, and provides structured services such as classes, forums, conferences and networking opportunities for entrepreneurs.
She was the co-founder of two technology startups in the Boston area. Jean co-founded AXON Networks, a pioneer in SNMP RMON network management solutions, which was acquired by 3Com. Following the acquisition, Jean was responsible for 3Com’s WAN strategy and led 3Com’s first venture investing deal. Jean founded Quarry Technologies with a team from the GTE Internetworking/BBN Technologies SuperRouter project and served as startup CEO and on the Board of Directors for the high-performance IP router startup. During this period, Jean served as the Chair of the Quality of Service (QoS) Task Group with the Open Group, a global consortium that fosters the development of open, vendor-neutral IT standards and certifications.
Jean is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and angel investing at colleges, universities and at many organizations. She serves on the board of The Technology Capital Network (TCN), teaching entrepreneurs about the investment process. Jean was recently named to the Alley-to-the-Valley investors group, bringing together the 50 most influential women investors in the country. She will be addressing the We Own It Conference in London, on women roles and behaviors in technology commercialization.
On the board of Thompson Island Outward Bound and Boston Rising, Jean supports the growth of science education and entrepreneurial jobs in the inner city. She has a BS from Boston University and an MS from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Henrik Totterman
President, LeadX3M LLC
Henrik is a Professor of Practice at Hult International Business School and teaching faculty at Harvard Extension School with relevant business and academic experience, and a doctorate in entrepreneurship and management. This background enables him to combine academic concepts with real-life experiences, when designing and delivering business and educational solutions across the world.
Henrik’s experience includes around 20 years as an international entrepreneurial leader and global business school executive, developing my own ventures and advising others. As an executive of a rapidly expanding global educational institution, He is seasoned in building teams and creating, implementing, and adjusting global strategies in highly competitive and regulated regional settings. Henrik is a serial entrepreneur in the fields of environmental services and business advising, with executive experience from our family business in machine tool trading.
Over the years, he has been fortunate to form teams with competent and results-oriented people who share the ambition of growing a business and designing compelling client solutions in regional and global contexts. In addition to my relationship with Hult and Harvard, Henrik brings interesting contacts to clients through his membership on the executive board of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce New England, the advisory board of Accion East in USA, and the board of executive education at the triple accredited Hanken School of Economics in Europe.
Josie Jordan
Co Founder, LiFT Learning
Josie created the nonprofit Learning Emporium for youth from public schools and homeschools to immerse themselves in experiential learning around their own interests. She works to empower youth by building experiential, self-directed programs, such as the Futures Personalized Learning Academy and the Pathways CBE Program, which put student voice and choice at the center. Josie currently coaches families, advises innovative programs and projects, and co-creates learning adventures with her three middle school children while aspiring to homestead on top of a mountain in Vermont.