In addition to being a frustrated parent dealing with the many antiquated payment systems in place at schools, Ali also spent six years on the other side of the equation, working for a school system that had no complete solution handle parent payments. In many cases, manual payments were made and the school had to manually track and report all of it. Ali is passionate about EdFinTech and handles everything at SKOOKii from day-to-day business and financial operations to marketing and sales and platform and feature development.
Andy programs and develops our web and mobile platforms, fixes bugs, adds new features, and ensures back-end and front-end functionality. He is a .NET, Node.JS, UI/UX, Android/iOS app developer with more than 10 years experience with POS payment systems.
Riza manages, validates, and tests our tech roadmap. He works with and supervises the developers to improve architecture practices and internal methodology. Riza previously worked as a Senior Engineer at Harvard Business School and is currently an Assistant VP/Lead Software Engineer at Wellington Management.
Ato is a Columbia MBA graduate and was the Deputy CEO at Kazakh National Investment Corp.
Manu is a Rumsfeld Fellow and serial entrepreneur in Central Asia focusing on EdTech & MedTech. He prioritizes feature development and optimizes and scales new features once validated.
Skip is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has helped a variety of startups launch, grow, and exit. He has also funded and launched a few of his own companies. Skip started his entrepreneurial career at an early age, buying a Gold’s Gym in the Bay Area. He then expanded to a total of 6 clubs and converted the brand to California Athletic Clubs before exiting via a sale of the franchise to 24-Hour Fitness. He then helped grow the IAC division of Ziff-Davis publishing to $250 million, after which it was sold to Thomson Publishing. Skip continued his entrepreneurial career with Sequoia Capital, backed Quote.com which was acquired by Lycos. Skip then founded and funded the first open source strategy firm, Open Source Group. Skip earned a bachelor’s degree from Claremont McKenna College, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the college of Notre Dame.
Jean is the co-founder and partner at LearnLaunch, as well as the founder of JPH Associates. A serial entrepreneur, Jean previously co-founded AXON Networks, which was acquired by 3Com, led 3Com WAN marketing activities and also founded Quarry Technologies. Jean is an active angel investor focusing on early stage high-tech and high-growth startups. She is a member of Hub Angels and Launchpad Venture Group, and the founder of the Boston Forum of Golden Seeds. She has an active portfolio and has served as a director or advisor with over 30 of the companies within her portfolio.
Jean was awarded the 2011 Monosson Prize for Entrepreneurship Mentoring by the MIT Sloan School of Management and the 2014 Hans Severiens Award by the Angel Capital Association in recognition of her work advancing angel investing and entrepreneurship. Jean also was awarded the 2013 Boston Business Journal Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jean has a BS in Biology from Boston University and an MS from MIT Sloan School of Management.