EduCon 2.5

Friday Night Panel, 6:00–8:00pm

Come to the Franklin Institute to see a group of societal and business entrepreneurs speak about how they think in an entrepreneurial fashion to have an impact on the world. This panel discussion is moderated by Frederic Bertley of The Franklin Institute.

• Jaime Casap, Senior Education Evangelist at Google
• Dawn Hancock, Founder and Managing Director of Firebelly Design
• Barrington Irving, First African-American to fly solo around the world, founder of the Flying Classroom
• Bobbi Kurshan, Director of Academic Innovation and Senior Fellow at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
• Jeff Pulver, Entrepreneur, Social Media Maven, VoIP Pioneer

Panel Bios

Jamie Casap

Jaime Casap is the Global Education Evangelist at Google, Inc. Jaime evangelizes the power and potential of the web, technology, and Google tools in education. He helps educational organizations across the world find ways to utilize these tools in support of new learning models. His team is responsible for bringing Google tools to millions of administrators, teachers, and students across the globe. Jaime was named one of Tech & Learning’s Top 10 Most Influential in Education, and is a SXSWedu (South by Southwest) Distinguished Speaker.

Dr. Bobbi Kurshan

Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan provides executive level leadership of a series of entrepreneurially focused programs and efforts (such as the Milken-Penn GSE Educational Business Plan Competition) and helps develop new degree and non-degree programs at the Penn Graduate School of Education. Dr. Kurshan has been involved with education and technology for over 35 years.

Dr. Kurshan has had a career as both an academic and award-winning entrepreneur. Kurshan has honed her vision of “what can be” using technology while supporting the growth of new education companies and developing innovative software products. She began her teaching career at Virginia Tech, where she obtained her doctorate, and was the Director of Academic Computing and Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Hollins College for many years.

As President of Educorp Consultants Corporation, she provided strategic consulting and seed funding in the areas of education, technology and innovation; and as the Executive Vice President of WorldSage, a consortium of for-profit higher education institutions in the EU to address education for the 21st century, she identified innovative investments in learning institutions. As the past Executive Director of Curriki she helped to build one of the most innovative and robust global open source education communities. She has previously served as the Co-CEO of Core Learning an education investment fund and the Chief Academic Officer of bigchalk. She currently serves on the Board of several education companies. She developed the first children’s software products for Microsoft and also created award-winning products for McGraw-Hill, Apple, CCC (Pearson) and others.