Meet Our Team

Partnerships & Operations Associate

Lia is a former elementary school teacher where she taught all subjects, but most enjoyed teaching reading and writing. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and a Masters in Education both from West Virginia University. Prior to TeachFX, Lia helped K-12 school districts maintain safe and healthy learning spaces. Her passion lies in creating an equitable learning environment in every classroom. In her spare time, Lia enjoys spending time with her family. She also loves country music, her dog, and being outside.

Partner Success Manager, Product Strategy Lead

Rakiya is a former kindergarten teacher and school administrator. She has a BA in Anthropology from Bowdoin College and an MFA in Dance from Hollins University. In her spare time, she watches football (go Ravens!) and HGTV. Rakiya is passionate about educational innovation and working on teams that challenge the status quo.

Co-founder & CTO

Berk holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford with a focus in Artificial Intelligence. He has served as a Teaching Assistant for Stanford’s advanced level natural language processing courses, working with folks like Dan Jurafsky and Andrew Maas. He was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2020!

Machine Learning Operations Manager

Dennis holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Laikipia University, Kenya. Prior to joining TeachFX, he worked at CloudFactory Kenya processing large data and with Noom, Inc.

Head of Partner Success

Joseph is a former high school math teacher, where he shared his passion for patterns and problem solving to his Geometry and Calculus students for 11 years. Since then, his mission is to support teachers through technology and by elevating best practices that benefit all learners while closing equity gaps. Joseph has a BA in Mathematics-Computer Science, an M.Ed from UCSD, and now resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Head of Product

Jacob is an edtech product leader, entrepreneur, and former educator. He has a BS in Symbolic Systems and an MA in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford, and before joining TeachFX, he co-founded and led the learning games studio Motion Math (acquired by Curriculum Associates).

Lead Machine Learning Engineer

Berk has a BS in Computer Engineering from Bogazici University and an MS in Computer Science from U.C. San Diego. Before TeachFX, he has been a Machine Learning Engineer at Lecida Inc and Tarentum AI, working on a wide array of problems ranging from time series prediction to news deduplication and ranking. He has also served as a teaching assistant at UCSD for four quarters, teaching Theoretical Foundations of Data Science. Berk’s primary goal is using software and data to make a positive impact in the society.

COO

Cynthia has dedicated her career to addressing issues of equity and inclusion. She spent more than a decade working on global financial inclusion for underserved populations at Kiva and Nova Credit, and is excited to bring the same equity-first lens to her work at TeachFX. She has an MS and MBA from Stanford with a certificate in public management.

Product Designer

Paloma is a Product Designer with a BFA in User Experience Design from SCAD. She is dedicated to creating contextual experiences that uplift the user. Prior to TeachFX, she worked at Sunrun to better the sales experiences for the representative's end.

Partner Success Manager

Mercedes is a former first grade teacher and elementary school principal who believes access to quality education is a right not a privilege. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Barnard College and an M.Ed from Touro College. In her free time she enjoys walking her dog Kaykay, attending Orange Theory classes and reading a good book.

Machine Learning Research Scientist

Matthew’s research focus has broadly focused on leveraging advanced machine learning models for practical speech and language applications. Matthew holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Notre Dame. He has also completed internships at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Cogito Corporation, and Google. Matthew’s work has spanned areas including ASR, error characterization, emotion recognition, and speaker diarization.

Strategic Partnerships Lead

Becky is a former elementary school teacher, Sunday school principal, high school interventionist, and college advisor and admissions counselor. She has a BA in Sociology from Dartmouth College and an MA in Education from Rockhurst University. Becky’s oldest brother is Jamie, TeachFX’s founder, and she is married to Lucas Richardson, the first teacher to ever use TeachFX!

Founder & CEO

Jamie is a former high school math and English teacher, coach, and athletic director with an MA in Education and MBA from Stanford. He also spent seven years working as an experimental theater artist with The Wooster Group and as the director of his own company.

Machine Learning Engineer

Shyamoli holds a BAS in Mathematics and Philosophy from Stanford University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Computer Science (AI) at Stanford. She is extremely interested in using Machine Learning tools to solve complex problems in the domain of Education. She eventually hopes to work towards reducing educational inequity in the world’s most severely affected regions, as she believes this inequality is the root of our world's most pressing problems.

Software Engineer

Xuan has a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from National University of Singapore, and a MS in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University. Prior to TeachFX, he spent his early career as a software engineer in Singapore. He's passionate about AI and has co-authored multiple AI papers. He has also served as a teaching assistant for multiple Stanford courses such as Machine Learning with Graphs. Xuan is interested in applying his AI and software engineering skillsets to advance equity in education.

Head of Research

Alyssa is a former 4th grade teacher and mathematics interventionist with a B.S. in Elementary Education and Child Studies, an M.Ed. in International Education Policy & Management, and a Ph.D. in Special Education from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education & Human Development. Alyssa has dedicated her career to developing and evaluating innovative education solutions that promote equitable outcomes for historically underserved student populations in classrooms, schools, districts, and states. Prior to TeachFX, Alyssa completed a Ph.D. focused on applying emerging technologies to develop scalable, evidence-based teacher support interventions that improve teachers' implementation of evidence-based practices with students with and at-risk for disabilities.

Researcher

Jessica is a former special education teacher, instructional coach, and behavior analyst. She holds an M.A.T. in Special Education and an M.Ed. in Behavior Analysis from James Madison University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Special Education at Vanderbilt University. Jessica specializes in leveraging technology to bridge the gap between research and practice in education. Her research focuses on applying machine learning and learning analytics to analyze educational data and develop tools that support and empower teachers working with students with disabilities. She investigates innovative approaches to teacher professional development, including the use of automated feedback to enhance classroom management and explicit instruction practices.

Partner Success Manager

Scott formerly taught English and Drama in Chicago Public Schools and remains an active volunteer tutor because he misses his students! He holds a B.S. in Communications from Northwestern University and an M.Ed. from DePaul University. He loves traveling the world, hiking and camping, reading fiction, seeing live music, and suffering through Chicago Cubs fandom.

Director of Professional Learning, Emeritus

Prior to joining TeachFX, David was a Professor and Director of Leadership Degree Programs at the Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. His research and writing focus on the challenges of school and district leadership, exploring how those challenges are met in practice. He is the author of several books on leadership and education. Previously, David spent 15 years in K-12 education as a teacher and high school administrator.

Assistant Professor

Dora is an Assistant Professor in Education Data Science at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She builds and deploys natural language processing methods to support equitable and student-centered education. Her research combines machine learning, natural language processing, linguistics and input from practitioners, in order to develop interpretable and scalable education measures. By deploying these measures, she aims to improve educational interventions, teachers' professional development and the equity of curricular materials.