Our Team
Alex Grodd (Founder & CEO) is a Teach For America alum who taught 6th grade English at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School. He founded BetterLesson to address the challenges he faced in the classroom.
Jonathan Hendler (Co-Founder & CTO) is dedicated to adapting best-of-breed technologies to applications with a social mission; balancing strategic consideration and engineering integrity.
Erin Osborn (Co-Founder & VP of Operations) finds hope in the eagerness of inspired students. She comes from the halls of Cambridge Public Schools and the mean streets of Ed Reform organizing.
Matt Sly (VP Product) is an experienced educator (four years of teaching high school in San Francisco and Philadelphia) and software developer (Microsoft Bing, Xbox & several startups)
Andrew Drane (Senior Web Developer) joined BetterLesson in early 2009 with 5 years of web development experience from both his own startup and consulting with a diverse range of clients.
Yevy Spivak (Senior Software Engineer) searches for technological solutions to social problems and hopes his work at BetterLesson will help more kids realize the value of education.
Matthew Lenard (Director of Research) taught middle school social studies in Atlanta and can't wait to watch his former students graduate from high school.
Christopher Cullen (Community Manager) taught 6th grade science at Roxbury Preparatory Charter School and is now Community Manager for BetterLesson. Please accept his colleague request.
Board Members
Jordan Meranus is a Partner in the NewSchools Venture Fund East Coast office, where he focuses on the firm’s school turnaround investment strategy.
About BetterLesson
BetterLesson was founded by a group of teachers from Atlanta and Boston public schools to connect educators and help them create, organize, and share their curricula.
We are focused on aggregating and scaling the most innovative content and practices from high-performing teachers across the country.
Frequently Asked Questions
Core Principles
Universal Access
Every educator – regardless of school location, resources, or demographics – should have access to the best instructional content in the world.
Real Recognition
A good lesson is a creative achievement. Lesson creators should receive real recognition for their original works.
Curriculum Matters
A high-quality curriculum (180 high-quality lessons in a row) drives student achievement.
Collaboration
Sustained collaboration is fundamental to the creation and delivery of the highest quality instruction.
Proud to be a Boston Startup!
We’re incredibly thankful to be building our company in Boston. We’re especially thankful for the consistent advice and moral support from our neighboring startups:
Viximo:
Viximo is the easiest way to drive revenue and engagement with virtual goods and currency. They are also our very generous landlords. We’re extremely grateful to Sean, Brian, and the whole team for their warm hospitality and eclectic music tastes.
OfficeDrop:
OfficeDrop is a digital filing system and document scanning service that helps small businesses manage both paper and digital documents. We frequently recommend OfficeDrop to teachers to help them digitize their curricula.
FollowUp.cc:
FollowUp.cc is a simple email reminder service that helps people get their inbox to zero - and fits into their workflow. Chris has been a great BetterLesson advisor from the beginning.
Shareaholic:
Shareaholic is fanatical about making people more productive by making sharing easy. It’s installed in our browsers and saves us a lot of time and energy when sharing content.
Green Certified Site
BetterLesson is carbon neutral. We measure the electricity used for the site, the network, and our client computers using C02 Stats. Click the icon at the bottom of this page to find out more.
