Adam is the Principal and Founder of The Learning Collective. Previously, Adam was the Director of Global Digital Strategy for Ashoka’s Youth Venture, which helps teams of youth in 20 countries launch socially responsible businesses and organizations. Prior to Ashoka, Adam was the Executive Director and Founder (and currently Board Member) of icouldbe.org, the non-profit Internet-based career mentoring program that has served over 25,000 teens and e-mentors nationwide and in Tanzania. Before establishing icouldbe.org, Adam was a Regional Coordinator for the New York City Department of Education. Adam began his career in education as a Spanish bilingual public school teacher in Los Angeles. Adam received a B.A. from Vassar College and a Master’s in Public Policy, with an emphasis on Education, from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. A frequent speaker at conferences, Adam has also won numerous awards including Cause Marketing Silver Halo Award for Best Use of Social Media (2009) and International Computerworld Magazine Honors Finalist Award (2002).
Adam entrepreneurs. Adam has started two companies, each of which filled gaps in the education market in the not-for-profit and for-profit sectors. With no external seed funding, Adam founded and, for six years ran, icouldbe.org.
Adam innovates. For ten years Adam has embraced educational technology as a way to break new ground. Specifically, Adam created icouldbe.org, a dot-org e-mentoring community and learning platform, at a time when commercial and mission-based online communities and nonprofits with even the most basic web presence were rare. Moreover, through icouldbe.org Adam convinced and worked with many schools and multinational corporations to adopt e-learning programs. At Ashoka’s Youth Venture, Adam pioneered digital marketing and social media learning initiatives such as training through virtual worlds, international youth programming through SMS, youth engagement through online learning games and edutainment, university e-learning experiences and youth-led community improvement through niche social networks.
Adam educates. Since 1994 Adam has either directly educated or played an integral role in the education of young people. In addition to the youth and adult online learning described above, Adam’s experiences include volunteering at direct service after-school programs, teaching at inner-city public schools, providing city-wide technical assistance through educational non-profits, interning at state-level educational policy committees, consulting school district leaders on student assessment methods and analysis and evaluating the performance of over two dozen charter schools.
Adam leads. For many years Adam has managed teams of staff often in dispersed physical locations across the country and globe. Additionally, Adam has overseen the experiences of literally thousands of volunteers including board members, on-site volunteers and e-volunteers. For three years Adam spearheaded the effort to goad multi-lingual and multi-national Ashoka colleagues to utilize digital means to further their offline initiatives.