Breakthroughs in Early Learning: Spotlight on Investors and Innovators

Join us for an engaging exploration into the forefront of early learning innovation and investment with industry leaders in venture capital, non-profit, and investment banking.  This session will address the product and business models in early learning that scale, traditional and non-traditional sources of capital, and the innovations and initiatives that are transforming the landscape of early childhood education.  Discover how pioneering entrepreneurs and visionary investors are collaborating to drive meaningful change and create lasting impact in early learning. 

• Deborah Quazzo, Founding Partner, GSV
  Deborah is the co-founder of the ASU+GSV Summit and the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures. Her work professionally and personally is focused on scaled education innovation. Deborah has been included on Insider’s list of top 100 seed investors three times. Now in its 16th year, the ASU+GSV Summit celebrates innovations and innovators across the global “preK to Gray” learning and workforce skills landscape, and attracts over 15,000 attendees to three premier events in San Diego and Gurgaon, India.
  Deborah serves on a number of education focused boards including, Ascend Learning, Class Technologies, Degreed, Dreamscape Learn, Ellucian and Turnitin. She is a member as well of the boards of The Common Ground Foundation, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and The Yidan Prize Foundation Advisory Committee.
  

• Charly Visconti, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
  Charly is head of the North American Education Technology and Services team. He is a member of both the Cross Market and the Technology, Media and Telecommunications groups in Investment Banking. Charly earned dual bachelor’s degrees from the Farmer School of Business and the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Miami University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
  

• Melissa Field, Senior Advisor at Promise Venture Studio
  Melissa Field is a Senior Advisor at Promise Venture Studio, where she coaches CEOs and entrepreneurs who aim to advance equity in early childhood. Melissa has 20 years experience in scaling quality educational programs within large school systems. She has spent the majority of her career working in early childhood education, and she brings an on-the-ground implementation and teacher empowerment lens to her work. As Chief Program Officer at Acelero Learning, she oversaw innovation and program fidelity at Acelero’s Head Start centers and managed the rollout of the program model to other Head Start and state systems. Melissa has learned from her roles at Bain & Company, La Petite Academy (now Learning Care Group), Kaplan Higher Education Corporation, and Hatch Early Childhood, and she has also advised many of the technology and curriculum leaders in the early childhood ecosystem. Melissa has an M.B.A from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an M.A. from the Stanford School of Education. She graduated with a B.S.E. from Duke University.
  

• Rick Segal, President at A L Mailman Family Foundation
  Rick is the founder and former Chair and CEO of Rethink Capital Partners and former Managing General Partner of Rethink Education. Currently he chairs the boards of Cinematic Healthcare Education and EnGen and is a board member of the Noodle Companies. He is a board observer for Voxy and Orijjin and is the Former Board Chair of Schoolnet and Begin Learning. Rick is the President of the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation and a Life Trustee of New York Presbyterian Hospital and serves on the boards of the NY Academy of Art and The Vero Beach Museum of Art, and past Chairman of the Rye Country Day School. He served on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Neuberger Museum and the Africa Center. Rick is the author of the soon to be released book, The Heart of It:The 10 Pillars of Mindful Impact Investing.
  

• Neal Shenoy, CEO at Begin
  At BEGiN, Neal is responsible for developing the company’s long term vision and strategy, recruiting exceptional talent, and managing its Board and Investor relationships. Neal is also a Founding Partner at [212]MEDIA which builds consumer media ventures in fragmented markets alongside major media companies. [212]MEDIA and its ventures have been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, TIME, Variety, MSNBC, and CNN for their innovative approach to building industry-leading ventures and have a collective enterprise value of over $2.5BN. Neal began [212]MEDIA by launching Saavn, the largest South Asian streaming music service globally, which was recently acquired by Reliance Industries, the largest conglomerate in India, in a transaction valued at over $1BN. Saavn reaches 150MM+ consumers and was chosen by Forbes as one of “America’s Most Promising Companies”. In addition to Saavn and BEGiN, Neal also co-founded LeagueApps and LiftMetrix (acquired by Hootsuite) within [212]MEDIA. Neal began his career as an Investment Banker in an upstart unit of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette that advised media & telecom companies. Neal earned a B.S.F.S. in International Relations at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University where he served as the President of the School of Foreign Service Academic Council and received the prestigious Dean’s Citation for excellence in Academics and Leadership. Neal is a regular speaker at conferences hosted by CES, O’Reilly, The Paley Center, NAB, and NAMIC and teaches digital strategy and storytelling classes for the Stern School of Business at New York University and Columbia Business School.