Ashley Lamb-Sinclair: CEO of Curio Learning

May 1, 2019

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Ashley Lamb-Sinclair is the Founder & CEO of Curio Learning, a platform to help teachers discover new ideas, curate them visually, and collaborate with other educators to become more creative and more empowered in their teaching craft.

Curio Learning has received numerous awards including acceptance into the LearnLaunch Accelerator in Boston, the Navitas Ventures Prize in the Milken Penn Business Plan Competition, and most recently, the grand prize in the Uber Girlboss Pitch Competition.

In addition to building Curio, Ashley was honored as the 2016 Kentucky Teacher of the Year. In that role, she served as Teacher in Residence for the Kentucky Department of Education and co-founded multiple statewide projects including KYEdPolicy.org, Policy Together, and The Courier Journal Classroom Connections. As Kentucky Teacher of the Year, she created innovative lesson plans with the Spotify for Education Advisory Board and received an EF Education First scholarship to study the education system in Finland with other educators.

Prior to being honored as Kentucky Teacher of the Year, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to Thailand and Vietnam and an English Speaking Union Scholarship to study creative writing at Exeter College at the University of Oxford. She is a contributing writer to the Atlanticand the Washington Post, among other publications, and taught secondary English and creative writing as a National Board Certified Teacher for thirteen years. She also founded an educator accelerator called School Startup, integrating entrepreneurship and human-centered design principles into teaching craft. She also provided expertise as a curriculum and educator outreach consultant to TrueSchool Studio based in New Orleans.

Highlights include:

• Ashley (a 14-year teacher) walks us through the process many teachers go through when planning, collecting and creating lessons
• "The Rebel Teacher" - Who are they? What are they rebelling against?
• The social impact of hundreds of thousands of teachers sharing and discussing resources in a network like Curio
• Ashley explains the challenges of going from the classroom to the startup world
• "There's a divide between what happens in schools and out of schools."
• Ashley has written for The Atlantic - how did her editors contradict the sacred beliefs of English teachers?
• The mindset, timing, and ebb and flow of teachers, which has a big impact on user growth
• Believe it or not, Ashley says, "I was a Luddite." Listen to her explain.
• What are the career paths available to teachers and how can EdTech startups expand opportunities?
• The suspicion teachers show towards Ashley because she's started a company (this is very real)
• Ashley's advice, which may surprise you, for teachers who want to carve out an entrepreneurial path

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 Thanks for listening!

Gerard Dawson

TheEdTechShop.com