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.
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.
Yevy Spivak (Director of Product Development) searches for technological solutions to social problems and hopes his work at BetterLesson will help more kids realize the value of education.
Grejdi Gjura (Director of Engineering) brings both considerable skill and practical idealism to BetterLesson, aiming to change the world one line of code at a time.
Elizabeth Johnson (Senior Program Director) taught ESL to the best kids of Boston Public Schools. She is committed to promoting positive change that improves the lives of individuals and communities.
Norma Gordon (Director of Teacher Learning) is dedicated to improving mathematics learning and success for all students. She has spent more than 15 years helping her students and education colleagues “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them”.
Chris Hartmann (Director of Curriculum & Instruction) is an experienced math educator with experience at the K-12 and university levels. Chris is passionate about professional development, teacher collaboration, and using technology in the classroom.
Christine Glandorf (Project Associate) taught 5th grade and coached rowing in Connecticut before joining BetterLesson. Christine is a proud alumna of the oldest public school in the country, and is committed to supporting that tradition in the 21st century.
Adam Bahlke (Software Engineer) likes to write code that positively impacts peoples lives and brings a mix of entrepreneurial and first-hand online education experiences.
Christopher Antreasian (UI Web Developer) follows current trends and standards of web technology, using his findings to create fun and compelling user experiences. Chris has a passion for education and believes that BetterLesson gives teachers a community to expand their knowledge base, learning more to teach better.
Board Members
Jennifer Carolan is a partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. Jennifer leads the Seed Fund, which was created to make investments in early-stage education technology companies with potential for big impact in K-12 education.
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.