Hannah Frankman is the founder of renegadeEducator and the host of the fast-growing Hannah Frankman Podcast—and in the spirit of this course, she spends a lot of time on social media (especially Twitter, where she’s amassed 140,000 followers across her two accounts). She also runs a brand consulting agency, where she builds social media accounts and branding projects for a number of clients. A homeschool graduate and the former Program Manager of Praxis, Hannah has almost a decade of experience in the alternative education world, working with organizations ranging from apprenticeship programs to fellowships to Montessori schools.

Michael Strong is founder of The Socratic Experience, a virtual school for children ages 8 to 18. He is one of the most experienced designers of innovative school programs in the United States. His projects include a public school program in which minority female students gained four years’ worth of critical thinking gains in four months (on the Watson-Glaser). He later went into Montessori secondary school program design at The Judson Montessori School (San Antonio), The Emerson School, and Hacienda School. He created The Winston Academy, where middle school students passed AP exams, making it the most academically advanced school in the country at the time. Another of Michael’s projects, Moreno Valley High School, a Paideia charter high school, was ranked the 36th-best U.S. public high school by Newsweek. More recently he co-founded KoSchool in Austin, Texas, which combined his high-performance approach to AP coursework and SAT score gains with a focus on entrepreneurial and creative projects. KoSchool, in turn, became the original model for The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school model for the largest Montessori network in the United States. Students from Michael’s schools have been admitted to Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Smith, Bard, Bennington, McGill, UT-Austin, University of Colorado, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Parsons School of Design, Quest, St. John’s and many dozens of other post-secondary institutions. He is the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice and lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems.

Kaity Broadbent currently serves as Prenda‘s Chief Empowerment Advocate. Since 2018 she’s helped pioneer Prenda’s unique microschool-based learning model and philosophy as Head of Learning. Prior to Prenda she was a Speech-Language Pathologist, literacy coach, and curriculum designer. She’s a certified peaceful parenting coach and mom to 4 spunky Prenda kids who love their microschools.

Adriane Thompson is a certified conscious parenting coach and a mom of
three energetic boys, which fuels her passion for helping parents navigate the
joys and challenges of raising kids. She loves being a coach because she
believes that empowered parents can create strong, connected families and
raise resilient, kind, and thoughtful adults. Adriane’s unique blend of expertise
in neurodevelopment, practical tools, and joyful energy makes her coaching
approachable and transformative.

Kelly Smith is obsessed with learning. He started a microschool around his
kitchen table in 2018, and since then has helped thousands of people start
their own microschools as the Founder/CEO of Prenda (www.prenda.com).
Before Prenda, Kelly ran a volunteer coding program at public libraries, built
and sold a small software business, worked in engineering and marketing
roles at various technology companies, and earned a master’s degree in
nuclear fusion from MIT. Kelly lives in Mesa, Arizona with his wife and four
children.

Erin Davis Valdez is the Executive Director of the Incubator of the Center for
Education and Public Service at the University of Austin. She has been
passionate about the transformational power of education all her life, having
been given the gift of being homeschooled. She taught for over a decade in
Austin-area schools and served as an assistant principal at a charter school in
Lewisville. These experiences have given her the opportunity to see first-hand
how students can thrive when they have excellent options.
Valdez joined the Charles Koch Foundation in 2015 where she helped to grow
a portfolio focused on helping innovative K12 programs grow through higher
education and other partnerships. At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, she
conducted research on outcomes-based funding at the secondary and
postsecondary levels, civics education, and workforce programs in Texas. She
has testified before the Texas and U.S. legislatures and shepherded
legislation expanding educational choices for K12 and postsecondary
students.
Valdez earned an M.A. in Classics from the University of California, Santa
Barbara and a B.A. in Classical Studies from Hillsdale College. She studied in
Athens, Greece her junior year and worked as an excavator at the Agora
archaeological site for three seasons.
Valdez has lived in the Austin area (on and off) since 1990, which counts as
“native” these days. She enjoys cooking, reading, volunteering, and spending
time with her husband Jeremy, her family, friends, and cocker spaniel,
Scoops.

Kaity Broadbent currently serves as Prenda’s Chief Empowerment Advocate.
Since 2018 she’s helped pioneer Prenda’s unique microschool-based learning
model and philosophy as Head of Learning. Prior to Prenda she was a
Speech-Language Pathologist, literacy coach, and curriculum designer. She’s
a certified peaceful parenting coach, Nurtured Heart trainer, host of the
Kindled Podcast, and mom to 4 spunky Prenda kids who love their
microschools.

Greetings everyone! This is my 4th year in the Microschool movement. I
started as a mother of three who wanted better for her kids, so my husband
and I decided to homeschool our children. Then it turned into becoming the
founder of DiscoverUAcademy. Thanks to VELA I am able to serve more
students of all abilities, in my bigger space we can have up to 15 students. I
am very passionate about the students finding their individual path and giving
the tools to set them on that path. I am an entrepreneur at heart and
managed my family along with a personal chef business prior to starting a
Microschool. This has affected my students in a positive way, because now I
am teaching the framework of starting a business (along with some kitchen
skills) to all who attend my program. I encourage them to join local farmers
markets and even hold “mock” markets for those who may not have the
chance to participate in a real market ~yet. My students love coming to class,
and that is the greatest joy I could ever ask for.

Elmarie is the founder of Learn Beyond The Book and has more than 20 years experience as an educator. She has taught her own 4 adult children, as well as group classes for homeschoolers and after school enrichment classes for public school students. She also has experience tutoring and has been a speaker at various homeschool seminars and conventions. She has been the coordinator of various homeschool co-ops and support groups, organizing numerous fieldtrips and other homeschool events as well. Before she started teaching, she obtained a degree in Accounting and worked as an accountant and auditor for years. She earned her Master’s degree from Antioch University specializing in Transformative Learning Communities. She has a passion for student-centered and relationship-based education and strives to accomplish that goal through means that go way beyond the textbook. She loves using projects, games, and hands-on learning while teaching, which is evident in the classes that she offers, the staff she works with at Learn Beyond The Book, as well as in the Where’s the Money curriculum she developed for teaching Economics, Finance, and Entrepreneurship.

DR. MARA LINABERGER Founder & CEO, Microschool Builders, LLC Mara believes that each of us has chosen to be here at this moment in time for a specific reason—that we are each on a mission that we chose for ourselves. And that figuring out what we love, what we’re good at, and how we can be of service is the engine we need to fuel a lifetime of joyful learning. Mara also believes that school often slows down or stifles that excitement for students. Mara is a life-long educator, author, technologist, artist, ballroom dancer, and musician, having spent 25 years in service as a public school educator, teacher trainer, and administrator. After completing a doctorate in Instructional Technology, she went on to earn a Superintendent’s Letter of Eligibility in Pennsylvania. Mara is the international two-time best-selling author of HELP! My Child Hates School and The Micro-School Builder’s Handbook. Mara currently lives in Harmony, PA, with her husband Michael while she travels far and wide, directly supporting clients in her global Microschool Builders programs.