Kathleen Schwille
Executive Director, PBLNow
Kathleen Schwille is a seasoned education executive with expertise in curriculum design, scaling innovation, and nonprofit leadership. In her most recent role at EL Education, Kathleen focused on launching open educational resources for ELA instruction in some of the largest school districts in the country.
Prior to EL Education, Kathleen led the education efforts at the National Geographic Society, where she led teams of content developers to create lessons, readings, games, custom video and more for educational use based on National Geographic’s engaging content library. Working closely with philanthropy and corporate partners, Kathleen led efforts to provide these resources free of charge to millions of students around the world at NatGeoEd.org. The content crossed disciples of science, history, geography, mathematics and other subjects.
Kathleen has a long history in education, content development and digital innovation with a focus on social justice and support for teachers. She is a former Peace Corps Volunteer, having served two years as a high school chemistry teacher in Tanzania. She developed innovative teacher professional learning software based on the international TIMSS studies of educational effectiveness. And, she developed a project-based high school environmental science curriculum that engaged students in making real-life decisions based on geographic data and analysis.
Ari Dolid
Director of Curriculum Design, PBLNow
Ari Dolid is a long time public school educator, having most recently been an instructional coach in the San Leandro Unified School District, focusing on Project Based Learning, English Language Arts, and Civic Engagement. In this role, he supported teachers and administrators as they engaged in work to develop authentic, personalized and rigorous learning experiences for all students.
Previously, he taught English Language Arts for 14 years, and is a co-founder of The Social Justice Academy at San Leandro High School, a small school program dedicated to empowering youth to become agents of change in their communities on personal, cultural and institutional levels. Ari recently completed his doctorate in education at Cal State East Bay, and focuses his research on digital multimodal composition and culturally sustaining pedagogy.
It can not be overstated that he would not have found any of this success without his fantastic partner Anne and his two children, Asher and Isaac, who help him maintain orbit in Oakland, California.