Thank You to Retiring Founding Trustees & Announcing New Members

As we mark this transition at the conclusion of our sixth school year, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank two of our school's founding Trustees.Hemant Taneja(Bella, Arya and Ajay) andShantanu Sinha(Vikram, Akshay and Neel) have provided instrumental and tireless guidance since the very first big vision dreams we discussed in our founding families' living rooms in 2013. They joined ourBoard of Trusteesat the founding of our school in May of 2014 and continued to guide, advise, and support KLS with tremendous sacrifice, patience, and dedication for the next six years. As their terms of service come to an end, I am so proud to reflect on what KLS has become. Today we are a thriving K-12 school comprised of 200+ students with a world-class team of educators and administrators delivering on our shared mission: a community of learners empowering every student to navigate their own path. And as we enter our 7th school year, at a time when so many students and schools are struggling, we are excited to be able to also deliver on our broader vision by sharing our successes and what we have learned with educators across the country and world. Please join me in thanking Hemant and Shantanu for their instrumental service in forming KLS and helping us build a solid foundation for lasting impact.

Onward!

—Sal

Introducing new members to our Board of Trustees:

Nayo Brooks

Nayo Brookshas been the Director of Lower School at St. Paul's Episcopal
School in Oakland, CA, since July 2018. Nayo received her Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of California, Davis, and a Masters of Education (with an emphasis in Educational Technology) from the University of San Francisco.

Nayo is a National Board Certified Teacher (Middle Childhood Generalist) and also works at Stanford's National Board Resource Center offering monthly support to teachers who are pursuing National Board certification.

Prior to joining St. Paul's, Nayo taught for 19 years at Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco. She taught both 3rd and 4th grade and took on a variety of teacher leadership roles, serving on committees and task forces centered around topics such as diversity, equity, & inclusion, curriculum planning, and teacher professional growth and evaluation. While at Burke's Nayo was the recipient of the Jessie Lea Abbott Excellence in Teaching Award (2016) and the Herbst Foundation Teaching Excellence Award (2015).

Dr. Kristen DiCerboDr. Kristen DiCerbois the Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy. In this role, she is responsible for driving and communicating the teaching and learning strategy for Khan Academy's programs, content, and product in order to improve student and teacher engagement and outcomes. She ensures pedagogical coherence and a research-informed design across Khan Academy's offerings.

Kristen's work has consistently been focused on embedding what we know from education research into digital learning experiences. Prior to her role at Khan Academy, she was Vice-President of Learning Research and Design at Pearson, where she led a team of researchers and learning designers conducting new research in learning and assessment and translating research insights into the design of learning tools. Kristen also previously served as a research scientist supporting teaching and learning in the Cisco Networking Academies and as a school psychologist in an Arizona school district.

Kristen's personal research program centers on the use of games and simulations to understand what learners know and can do and she has published extensively in academic journals and books in this area. She speaks to audiences from parents to teachers to school administrators to education researchers on a range of topics related to what we know about learning from education research. Kristen received her Bachelor's Degree from Hamilton College and Master's Degree and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at Arizona State University.

Curtis Feeny

Curtis Feeny has invested in enterprise software for 18 years with a focus on data analytics. Curtis has served on 31 boards, both public and private. He also invested with Stanford professors in Plangrid, Accuray (IPO), and other highly successful startups out of Stanford University. Since 2000, he has been on the board of Trammell Crow Company, which was purchased by CBREin 2006, and has remained on the board since.

In 2005, Curtis was appointed by President George W. Bush to be a Trustee of the Presidio Trust. Previously, Curtis was the first Executive Vice President of the newly formed Stanford Management Company, helping oversee the University's endowment from 1992 to 2000, when assets under management grew from $1.5 billion to $9 billion. Curtis has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a BS in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University.