Learning Differences
All Means All
Entrepreneur: Lindsay Kruse and Ben Marcovitz
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
All Means All builds partnerships with school and system leaders to increase equitable outcomes and opportunities for students with disabilities and other intersectional identities that have been historically marginalized. Our flagship AMA School Leadership Program is a 15-month cohort-based fellowship for school leaders along with their school and/or network based teams that pairs repeated practicing of key adaptive skills (mindsets, adult culture and problem solving) and the technical levers to address inequity in schools with the deep coaching, feedback and collaboration to sustain it. Leaders in the program will work to shrink key academic and/or social emotional opportunity gaps rooted in systemic racism and ableism for students with disabilities with a particular focus on Black and Latino students from low-income backgrounds.
Celebrate EDU
Entrepreneur: Jenny Anderson
Founded: 2022 | Visit the Site
Celebrate EDU provides individuals with disabilities the skills needed to become entrepreneurs. Celebrate EDU’s new initiative will provide curricula to create group-based microenterprises for youth with learning differences in high school. The goal is to introduce entrepreneurship to students and encourage leadership development through business education.
Cognitive ToyBox
Entrepreneur: Tammy Kwan
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
Cognitive ToyBox develops game-based tools that make early childhood assessment efficient, actionable and equitable. Their mission is to help every child start school ready to succeed. Through the Learning Differences initiative, they are developing new research-based tools to support the assessment of social-emotional and executive functioning skills for 3-to-5 year old children.
Dyslexia Alliance for Black Children
Entrepreneur: Resha Conroy
Founded: 2020 | Visit the Site
Dyslexia Alliance for Black Children works to eliminate the amplified inequities for Black children experiencing unaddressed dyslexia or related learning disabilities. Through collaborative efforts with families and educators, we inform, empower, and raise awareness of the need for early identification and intervention for Black children with dyslexia through sharing knowledge, dismantling systems of bias, and paving pathways to evidence-based reading instruction.
Expert IEP
Entrepreneur: Antoinette Banks
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
Expert IEP’s goal is to empower caregivers of youth who think and learn differently to participate as valued members of the IEP team. We achieve their goal by leveraging machine learning to elevate caregiver assets, help caregivers advocate for clear and appropriate IEP goals, and monitor service delivery as well as overall student progress. We are the first IEP optimization app for families by families.
IEP&Me
Entrepreneur: Bridgette Leslie and Coretta Martin
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
IEP&Me is reimagining specialized education for students, families, and educators through a simplified and digestible platform, encouraging collaboration and providing resources that promote self-advocacy and transparency.
Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI)
Entrepreneur: Vichi Jagannathan and Seth Saeugling
Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI) is a community-based social venture studio that builds the capacity of rural communities to support people’s healing from generational trauma to achieve health, safety, connection, and self-determination. ROI’s newest initiative “10x Mental Health Supports for Students” helps schools and community-based organizations to put the systems and structures in place to leverage Medicaid funding so they can increase student access to mental health services.
SELF
Entrepreneur: Aqua Stovall
Founded: 2022 | Visit the Site
SELF’s vision is an educational system where all students are celebrated, treated with dignity, and their strengths are leveraged to empower authentic and individualized learning. Our mission is to empower schools to create welcoming and effective communities that enable all students to achieve their fullest potential. The National Leader Fellowship, established in 2022, will bring together school leaders and special education coordinators in an intensive two-year fellowship consisting of specialized training, coaching, professional learning communities, peer reviews and visits to exemplary special education programs. This cohort of national leaders will collaborate and return to their respective schools and districts with rich and diverse plans of action.
Social Cipher
Entrepreneur: Vanessa Castañeda Gill
Founded: 2018 | Visit the Site
Social Cipher builds social-emotional learning video games that help youth of all neurotypes understand themselves and those around them, and software that helps educators and counselors better understand their students’ social emotional well being.
The Inspired Community Project
Entrepreneur: Jillian Moses
Nonprofit | Founded: 2021 | Visit the Site
The Inspired Community Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing no-cost early intervention services to neurodivergent children, advocacy coaching for their families, and specialized career training and certification support for Bronx community members. Creating a self-sustaining, hyper-local, special education resources system, of the community for the community.
Thriving Students Collective
Entrepreneur: Rebecca Branstetter, Ph.D. and Sarah Eisenberg Hauser
Founded: 2022 | Visit the Site
Thriving Students Collective® provides engaging digital resources and professional development for individuals and K-12 schools to: 1) Reverse educator and mental health provider burnout, 2) Support families of children with mental health and learning needs, and 3) Provide “learn today, use tomorrow” curriculum for supporting diverse learners. Our video streaming service, Thrive Hive TV™, brings child development experts into the home and classroom, with short, research-based, practical advice for teaching executive functioning, social-emotional learning, and strategies to support students with disabilities.