Kennard joins BetterLesson as the company enters stage of exponential growth and looks to scale and optimize business operations.
CAMBRIDGE, MA (February 24, 2021) – BetterLesson, a leading provider of high quality virtual and in-person K-12 professional learning, announces Matthew Kennard as its new CEO. In this role, Kennard will guide BetterLesson’s accelerating growth and focus on scaling the business’ operations to meet demand. With Kennard adding operational expertise, BetterLesson co-founders Erin Osborn and Alex Grodd will concentrate on forging large-scale partnerships, iterating on existing products, and driving future product development.
“Matt is an experienced leader with deep domain expertise and insights. His long history of successful collaboration with school districts combined with deep user empathy for teachers and administrators make him a uniquely perfect fit for leading BetterLesson,” said Tory Patterson, BetterLesson board member and Managing Director at Owl Ventures.
BetterLesson launched in 2008 with a mission to provide a simple way for educators to connect and share high-quality lesson plans. Since then, the organization has grown into a professional development leader with a team that possesses extensive educational experience and a deep-seated commitment to equity in education. Trusted by thousands of educators and hundreds of schools, districts, and organizations, BetterLesson’s professional
learning services are action-oriented, evidence-based, collaborative, and tailored to the needs of individual teachers and the students in their classrooms.
“We’re proud to have founded BetterLesson as teachers and built the company into a professional development leader,” Grodd said. “Now is the right time to bring someone in like Matt who can help take the business to the next level and support even more students by providing educators with student-centered professional development.”
“As co-founders and former teachers, we’re very passionate about ensuring that all students have inspiring, effective, well-supported teachers – that’s part of why we founded BetterLesson,” Osborn said. “With Matt leading business operations, Alex and I can get back in the field; working more closely with educators and bringing what we learn back to the company to drive product innovation and growth.”
Kennard most recently worked as Chief Financial Officer and Head of Corporate Operations at LearnZillion, a provider of leading, high quality K-12 curriculum. While there, he successfully led LearnZillion’s acquisition by Weld North Education. Prior to that, he served in various finance and strategy leadership roles at organizations including iHeartMedia, Rackspace, and Investcorp Technology Partners. Kennard is a graduate of Yale University.
“BetterLesson has immense opportunity to scale and broaden its reach. With evolving learning modalities driven by school closures, there is more demand than ever before for effective synchronous and asynchronous
professional development in both virtual and in-person settings,” Kennard said. “I look forward to working alongside the talented BetterLesson team to bring the benefits of quality professional development into every classroom in the country.”
Kennard will join BetterLesson as CEO on March 1, 2021.
