Welcoming New Diversity to Remind’s Board of Directors

We were excited to announce at the end of last month that Deborah Quazzo, Founder and Managing Partner of the education and learning-focused venture fund GSV Acceleration, has joined our board at Remind. In addition to her role leading GSV Acceleration, Deborah serves as Co-Founder of the ASU-GSV Summit and a founding member leading GSV’s broader education advisory efforts. I’ve known Deborah and her business partner Mike Moe (GSV’s Founder and Executive Chairman), for almost a decade, meeting back before they formally launched the broader GSV platform. Over this timeframe I’ve seen how much impact Deborah and Mike have had in helping shape the burgeoning “edtech” sector by bringing edtech companies together with the relationships they’ve forged with so many leaders and educators from around the world.

While a recent Edsurge article highlighted the dearth of women directors on edtech company boards, we certainly didn’t need that important story to prompt our decision to approach Deborah about taking a seat on the Remind board. We believe in the importance of diversity in all settings, from the team we continue to build at Remind to the users and customers we serve across the K-12 and higher education landscape. In fact, research supports the clear connection between investments in diversity and business success. Board composition is no exception to our diversity focus, and thankfully we’re seeing this become a more focused topic not just in Silicon Valley but across the business landscape globally. When we think about diversity at Remind, we attempt to approach this important element of company building in a multi-dimensional way. With Deborah joining Remind’s board, we diversify our Board in at least three such dimensions.

Industry Expertise. Deborah clearly brings a wealth of education industry experience and expertise to our Board. As a Co-Founder of the ASU-GSV Summit — a gathering that has become one of the central hubs for all constituencies working to advance education and learning across the spectrum from “K to Gray” — Deborah has seen every slice of how education companies have worked successfully (or unsuccessfully) in conjunction with the broader education ecosystem at the federal, state, higher education, and local K-12 district and school building levels. In addition, Deborah has served on a wide range of boards over her career in the education space including the Chicago Board of Education, America’s Promise Alliance, Teach for America Chicago, and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Chicago. She also serves today as a board member or board observer on a number of edtech company boards. We are fortunate at Remind that we now have the opportunity to blend Deborah’s unique perspective on education and learning company creation with our other two investor board members — John Doerr, Chairman of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and Chamath Palihapitiya, CEO of Social Capital — who themselves bring deep education experience and passion as evidenced by their portfolio investments in the education sector in addition to Remind.

Geographic Perspective. I love Silicon Valley and the unique perspectives that those who live here bring to the table. At the same time, Silicon Valley oftentimes shades our view of the reality that exists beyond Northern California. Yes, believe it or not, but every student in the U.S. doesn’t own an Apple iPhone nor does every student complete their homework in the cloud on Google Apps for Education. Deborah has spent most of her adult life on the East Coast and in the Midwest, specifically in Chicago where she lives today, and as a result she brings a keen sense of the challenges that so many teachers, students, and parents confront every day in American schools. The education sector represents a unique mix of federal, state, and local oversight that cuts across all 50 states as well as a broad spectrum of ideologies and pedagogies, mixed with the ongoing digital advancements that deliver different school and classroom experiences to students in Portland, Maine versus Portland, Oregon. Deborah’s unique user and customer perspective complements the Silicon Valley expertise that John and Chamath possess alongside their own geographic diversity (John is also a Midwest native and Chamath grew up in Toronto, Canada). Boards should strive to reflect as diverse a geographic perspective as possible in order to best frame how companies can — and should — grow on behalf of all users and customers.

A Woman’s Voice. Clearly, the most notable form of diversity that Deborah brings to Remind is that she is the first woman to join our Board. That said, Deborah isn’t the first woman to make significant contributions to Remind. Today 36% of our team members at Remind are women, representing roles that cut across every functional area of our company. Further, we have been fortunate to receive amazing input and support from women partners at our current investors, specifically Mary Meeker and Juliet de Baubigny from Kleiner Perkins, and Brigette Lau from Social Capital. Now this isn’t about the research battle that perpetually attempts to prove (or disprove) that companies with more women board directors outperform those with fewer female directors. Nor is this about pouring through psychology research to substantiate claims that women bring more empathy and rational decision making to a company’s board. Frankly, I don’t need any research to convince me that having a female voice on Remind’s board will be good for our company’s performance. In many ways I feel that we made the decision to have Deborah join our Board because she is smart and caring, because she is an education industry expert, because she brings a perspective from outside Silicon Valley, because she has a great sense of humor, because she doesn’t take herself too seriously, and because she makes the women and men at Remind proud to work at Remind.

I know for sure I’ve overlooked many other dimensions of diversity important for boards to consider — several of which Deborah, John, and Chamath certainly bring to Remind’s Board. The important takeaway here is to to think about the shape of your business — who are your users, customers, partners, and employees— and to then reflect on what perspectives and experiences will help round out the board that you as CEO will lean on for important guidance over time. In bringing Deborah onto Remind’s board we’ve certainly added mightily to an already diverse set of expertise and perspective, and that’s why I’m so excited and fortunate to have her as one of the six members of our Board…and one of my five bosses!