Nice to meet you.
Our Focus
Crafting a personalized & proven approach to learning
- Matching every student to an appropriate certified teacher
- Fostering trust with a focus on relationships
- Creating customized, research-based learning plans
Focusing on empowerment & confidence
- Nurturing the Whole Child: academic and emotional
- Helping students, parents, and teachers to embrace challenge
- Celebrating shared values about education
Creating the tools for an ever-improving experience
- Designing reports for parents that increase transparency
- Developing resources for teachers that make their jobs easier
- Building validated networks for doctors & schools to support families
Our Team
Founders
Braintrust’s founders bring a combination of educational bonafides, demonstrated business acumen, and the laser-focused parental insights that come from raising 5 kids between them. Mara and Jen empathize with parents and teachers alike, and have the expertise to cleverly solve the most pressing problems facing educators and the families they support.
Jen Mendelsohn
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Jen loves nothing more than quarterbacking a business opportunity and spent 15+ years selling enterprise tech before Braintrust. Her professional development comes from cultivating relationships and bringing opportunities to fruition. Jen’s competitive spirit borders on the unhealthy, fortunately there is a charm to her relentlessness.
Mara Koffmann
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Mara is a problem solver. She’s spent her entire professional career helping students and families understand and overcome their most difficult learning obstacles. No matter how seemingly intractable the problem, Mara relishes rolling up her sleeves and finding effective – and fun! – solutions that will help students achieve their full potential.
Sales Leadership
Our dynamic sales team members are seasoned professionals who are dedicated to shaping the future of education. We’re passionate about delivering innovative, high impact tutoring solutions that empower learning and growth. With a deep understanding of educational needs and a commitment to excellence, our team is here to make the best quality tutoring accessible to everyone, driving positive change in the world of learning.
Mark Bosco
Senior Partnerships Director
Mark brings 30+ years of experience in public education to Braintrust, including positions as Teacher, Department Chair, Principal, Executive Director, and, most recently, Senior Administrator of Expanded Learning with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, where he facilitated the partnership between 100 schools, 20,000 students and 30 high-dosage tutoring vendors. He understands the importance of school/district leadership, the fidelity of program implementation, with a focus on standards-based instruction, aligned intervention, and assessment outcomes.
Amy Ambatielos
Director of Educational Partnerships
Amy is an educator at heart. Before booking HGTV shows or producing CNN packages, she was a classroom teacher. Teaching through the pandemic, Amy became acutely aware of the overall gaps in students’ learning. She joined Braintrust to help close those gaps in schools and districts where the loss is most prevalent and the need for support is greatest.
Gabrielle Fraenkel
School Outreach Lead
Gabby considers herself an educational concierge who loves connecting people to powerful resources/ platforms. She brings a wealth of key strategy and operations experience with school districts across the country, including as Special Assistant to Superintendent of Boston Public Schools and Chief of Staff at the NYC DOE in the School Planning and Development Division.
Operations Leadership
Our operations team members are deeply experienced, customer-focused business operators. But, more important than our expertise is our empathy — our team members are parents, educators, and dedicated individuals who wake up each day thinking about how to improve the tutoring experience and build a better way.
Ivy Rasmusen
Director of Operations
Ivy is a veteran educator, entrepreneur, and businesswoman. After starting out her career as a teacher, she ran a successful business for 13 years until returning back to education after discovering first-hand how learning loss and reading deficiencies were affecting her son. She has deep experience in educational technology and has a knack for processes, organization and customer success.
Erica Granda
Customer Success Manager
Erica is a data-driven, results-oriented, client-focused professional with experience creating targeted and purposeful growth paths for all types of learners to achieve defined outcomes. She has spent her entire professional career seeking out the best educational practices for students in need. She loves tackling complex problems in order to create streamlined solutions that make everyone’s life easier!
Jessica Lippman
Customer Success Manager
Jessica has navigated diverse roles within the education field, ranging from classroom teacher to senior leadership positions, hiring and training quality instructors for a multibillion-dollar company. She excels in maintaining seamless operations, optimizing educational experiences and nurturing top educators, and strongly believes in Braintrust’s mission to create exceptional learning environments.
Maria Rea
Customer Success Manager
Maria is a passionate former educator and Success Manager with extensive experience in client success and relationship building. She brings a wealth of experience from working in classrooms across multiple states and serving as a Success Manager for various schools nationwide. Her dedication to education led her to join Braintrust Tutors, where she continues to support students’ learning and success.
Amy Agneta
Director of People
Amy proudly identifies as a “recruiting nerd,” with 19 years of experience in the field. With a background spanning from start-ups to large-scale corporations, Amy has led recruiting teams across diverse landscapes. When she’s not keeping up with industry trends, she enjoys unwinding through reading, exploring new culinary experiences, and embarking on travels.
Taren Latta
Tutor Recruitment and Success Lead
Ashley Kulcsar
Tutor Support Lead
Ashley takes pride in helping others succeed. She has experience as a classroom teacher, and in the corporate world at an eBook company supporting schools to build their digital libraries and promote student reading. Ashley has a master’s degree in literacy, a background in the Science of Reading, and deeply appreciates how Braintrust’s values in helping students align with her own.
Alisa Cavanaugh
Onboarding and Training Specialist
Alisa is a dedicated problem solver with a 20-year career in education, focusing on empowering teachers to thrive in their teaching environments. Alisa is passionate about researching the latest trends in professional development for educators. Alisa also serves as the Co-President and Co-Founder of a non-profit organization dedicated to the success of students in a local drama program.
Development Leadership
Our exceptional development team is at the forefront of innovation. Our developers bring together cutting-edge technology and a deep understanding of the learning landscape to create a platform that’s tailored to the unique needs of our students, schools, and parents. Their commitment to excellence and a passion for making education accessible drive every line of code they write.
Rowan Gillson
Chief Technology Officer
Alex Heflin
Technical Team Lead
Alex is a deeply experienced senior software developer with a demonstrated history of working in technology-focused consulting and project leadership roles. Skilled in front end technologies, back end technologies, project management and web design, Alex brings 10+ years of experience and a passion for making a difference in the lives of the students we serve.
Annie Schultz
Senior UX/UI Designer
Board of Advisors
Our advisors are seasoned experts who provide us critical insights and advice to help us improve our programs, explore new opportunities and accelerate our growth by stimulating robust, high-quality conversation.
Jay Russell
Advisor
Dr. Russell is Executive Director of The Windward Institute, whose mission is to increase childhood literacy, and a Yale faculty member at the Yale Child Study Center. Previously, Jay served for 13 years as head of The Windward School and for 11 years as superintendent of schools in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. In 2019, he was named Distinguished Leader in Education by Education Update.
Dr. Brock Eide
Advisor
Dr. Eide is a leading expert in the fields of dyslexia and brain-based learning. He and his wife authored the internationally best-selling book The Dyslexic Advantage (2011) as well as The Mislabeled Child (2006); and founded the 501(c)3 non-profit Dyslexic Advantage, one of the world’s largest online dyslexia communities.
Peter Bencivenga
Advisor
Peter is an industry titan with deep edTech experience. Peter is CEO of PrepScholar, which provides personalized and effective online test preparation programs. Prior to PrepScholar, he taught high school for over a decade in New York City public schools and worked on technical integration initiatives for the NYCDOE before co-founding DataCation. He’s also held roles as Chief Academic Officer of IO Education and President of Operoo.
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