Betsy Corcoran
Hugh Norwood
Deborah Quazzo
Clyde Boyer The 2013 LAUNCHedu Emcees will lend their expertise and talent to the 2013 LAUNCHedu competition at SXSWedu, March 4-7, 2013 in Austin, Texas. Learn more about the cutting-edge start-up companies selected as finalists to compete for top honor and register today to witness all the action.
Betsy Corcoran
Co-Founder
EdSurge
Elizabeth “Betsy” Corcoran is co-founder of EdSurge, the fastest growing newsletter on education-technology entrepreneurship. She had previously spent 10 years with Forbes, where she served as Executive Editor for technology coverage at Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.
Read More
Earlier in her career, Elizabeth was an award-winning staff reporter for The Washington Post, covering high-tech issues in government and Silicon Valley. She once lost her car during reporting at CIA headquarters but it was located quite quickly. Unnervingly quickly, in fact. She also was an editor at Scientific American, where she wrote about supercomputing, quantum dots and the economic theories of Larry Summers.
Hugh Norwood
Founder and CEO
Trinity Education Group
Hugh Norwood is founder and CEO of Trinity Education Group, an ed tech strategy & thought leadership company. He has been in and around the education industry as a professor, administrator, new biz incubator and strategist since 1995, with successful leadership tenures at Emerson College, Lesley University, Laureate Education, Inc. and A+RISE (acquired by Pearson).
Read More
Deborah Quazzo
Founder and Managing Partner
GSV Advisors
Deborah is a 25-year investment banker and entrepreneur. She is the Founder and Managing Partner of GSV Advisors, which she started in April 2009. SV Advisors is a merchant bank providing advisory services to the education and business services sectors, as well as making select investments on an individual basis in private companies including Altius, FiftyOne, Inc., HotChalk, Dreambox Learning, and Alltuition.
Read More
Prior to GSV Advisors, Deborah co-founded ThinkEquity Partners in 2001, which grew to a 180-person investment bank with 5 offices in the U.S. While at ThinkEquity, Deborah was President and Head of Investment Banking. ThinkEquity was acquired in March 2007 by London-based Panmure Gordon (AIM: PMR) where Deborah was a Board member. She has been a longtime growth investment banker and now focuses primarily on education and business services. Prior to ThinkEquity, Deborah was a Managing Director in Investment Banking at Merrill Lynch & Co., where she worked from 1987-2001 and started the Global Growth Group. She previously worked at J.P. Morgan.
Presently, Deborah serves on the Board of Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW), an internet services company serving small- to medium-sized businesses globally. She is also a member of the Boards of Steppenwolf Theater Company; Teach for America Chicago; New Schools for Chicago Fund; Marwen, a visual arts education provider for underserved youth; NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship) Chicago; and KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) Chicago. GSV Advisors also has a partnership with Arizona State University and the firm co-hosts an annual Education Innovation Summit at ASU Skysong. Deborah graduated cum laude with a BA in history from Princeton University in 1982 and an MBA from Harvard University in 1987.
Clyde Boyer
Partner and CIO
Trinity Education Group
Clyde Boyer is an award-winning designer who has been involved at the crossroads of education, technology and design since Yahoo! was a startup. As Director of International Projects for Global SchoolHouse, Clyde helped usher in two of the most influential ed tech projects of the past decade; ThinkQuest and WorldLinks for Development, which was featured at DAVOS as a model for collaborative design.