ABOUT FEL

Family Engagement Lab is a national nonprofit that catalyzes equitable family engagement and student learning in historically underserved communities. Our work builds partnerships between teachers and families by bridging classroom curriculum and at-home learning, and facilitating ongoing communication and collaboration. 

Mission: To ignite the potential of millions of families to support their child's learning. 

Traction: FEL has measurably increased family engagement in learning for over 45,000 students, through partnerships with major school districts in the country (e.g. Louisiana Department of Education, Oakland Unified, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, and Baltimore City Schools). 

Nationally Recognized: By eminent academic institutions such as Harvard University, the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and  J-Pal at MIT. 

Founded: 2016

Total Funded: $7M

Funders: Top K-12 education foundations who specifically fund us for our technology approach, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Guggenheim Network for Social Innovation and the NewSchools Venture Fund.

Team size: 8

Location: Remote (with Pacific Time overlap)

LEADERSHIP TEAM

Vidya Sundaram, CEO & Co-Founder

Elisabeth O’Bryon, Chief Impact Officer & Co-Founder

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WHY WORK WITH US

Mission Driven and Founder Led:

Founders Vidya Sundaram (CEO) and Dr. Elisabeth O’Bryon (Chief Impact Officer) are leading a highly qualified and motivated team committed to using technology to benefit our nation’s most vulnerable students, with a focus on children living in poverty, children adversely affected by racism, and multilingual learners.

A Non-Profit with Product-Market Fit:

Family Engagement Lab is a unique non-profit that acts like a start-up. As a non-profit, we’re able to access funding to disrupt educational inequity in communities neglected by for-profit education vendors. We build products iteratively and in collaboration with our users, and have dramatically improved learning outcomes and long-term opportunities for underserved students.

Significant Social Impact:

This is a pivotal moment for FEL as we expand our impact across the public school system. We’ve done the research and found our product-market fit, now we need a tech leader who can help us scale!

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THE PROBLEM

Students from low-income families, students of color and multilingual learners together comprise a majority of US students, yet are significantly underserved by public education systems. The pandemic has widened income and racial disparities, with students in high-poverty schools projected to experience 5% lower income during their lifetimes (Hanushek and Woessman, 2020).

Inequalities in how schools engage with families contribute to the disparities, leaving underserved families eager to help their children succeed in school yet lacking the resources and information to enable them to do so.

OUR SOLUTION

Family Engagement Lab (FEL) catalyzes equitable family engagement and student learning by bridging classroom curriculum and at-home learning. We help schools and teachers share relevant and timely tips and activities aligned with high-quality literacy and math curriculum, fostering a deeper connection between families and their children’s learning. 

Our core program, FASTalk (Families and Schools Talk), gives educators a simple and accessible way to communicate via text messages to adult caregivers in their preferred language, leveraging content sequenced through the school year. Over the last five years, FEL has measurably increased family engagement in learning for over 45,000 students.

Our Technology

We offer a mobile app (iOS and Android) for teachers to review, compose and manage their messages.

Our backend infrastructure runs on AWS (EC2, RDS, SES) and handles message translation (using Google Translate), routing (Twilio messaging services), and importing data from school district information systems. 

Our Data-driven Approach

Founded by a multilingual team that includes two female founders – one of whom is a child of immigrants and a person of color with lived experience similar to that of our community – FEL’s work is shaped by the perspectives of the families we serve. 

We use data from our FASTalk tool, along with interviews, focus groups, and surveys to continually refine our approach. Over the last five years, FEL has measurably increased family engagement in learning for over 45,000 students, not only satisfying and engaging parents but also giving students greater confidence and ability to succeed in school and beyond.

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EXCITING OPPORTUNITY FOR A KEY LEADERSHIP HIRE

We are excited to welcome our first Head of Technology to support our mission of advancing educational equity. As a key member of the leadership team with scope across engineering and product, you’ll lead strategy and development of our products, internal tools, data, and back-end infrastructure. Reporting to a CEO with a technical background, you’ll be empowered to innovate and explore new tech to drive scale and deeper personalization for greater impact. 

Responsibilities Include: 

• Strategic & Organizational Leadership

• Define FEL’s technology strategy and roadmap to support business objectives, including product, technical, data privacy & security considerations

• Define product success metrics and collaborate with cross-functional owners (research, design, sales) to drive strategic initiatives

• Make strategic infrastructure decisions, ensuring technical excellence, resilience and scalability

• Manage technical resource allocation, with a combination of external resources and internal hires

• Develop revenue strategy for our web services and applications

• Technical & Product Leadership

• Identify, scope and drive high value opportunities for product features, technical improvements and partnerships

• Oversee product and technical delivery and build a culture of iterating quickly while maintaining quality

• Manage strategic partner and vendor relationships e.g. Twilio & our existing, well-functioning development vendor

Preferred Qualifications 

• The Head of Technology role may span a range of experience and expertise. Given the strategy focus, our candidate likely has 10+ years of professional experience, with 4+ years in a tech leadership / management role.

• Experience defining and executing on product & technology strategy, ensuring alignment with the organization's mission and vision

• Excellent problem-solving skills, with a data-driven and customer-focused mindset

• Entrepreneurial and growth mindset, with a track record of successfully driving technological innovation and scaling high impact solutions, especially in a start-up like environment

• Skilled at recruiting, partnering, and hiring and believes our team needs to be representative of the communities we serve. Demonstrated understanding / commitment to supporting equity and inclusion.

• Experience with data privacy and security, as protecting data is core to our business

• Partnering with executive team in conducting and interpreting market and user research to identify opportunities and prioritize product features

• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills. Able to work well with non-technical partners

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science or related area. Bonus: MBA/graduate degree

• Extra credit:

• Experience in mobile app development, human-centered design and impact measurement

• Experience developing technology used in K-12 public school systems or other government entities

Preferred Qualifications 

• The Head of Technology role may span a range of experience and expertise. Given the strategy focus, our candidate likely has 10+ years of professional experience, with 4+ years in a tech leadership / management role.

• Experience defining and executing on product & technology strategy, ensuring alignment with the organization's mission and vision

• Excellent problem-solving skills, with a data-driven and customer-focused mindset

• Entrepreneurial and growth mindset, with a track record of successfully driving technological innovation and scaling high impact solutions, especially in a start-up like environment

• Skilled at recruiting, partnering, and hiring and believes our team needs to be representative of the communities we serve. Bonus: Demonstrated understanding / commitment to supporting equity and inclusion

• Partnering with executive team in conducting and interpreting market and user research to identify opportunities and prioritize product features

• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills. Able to work well with non-technical partners

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science or related area. Bonus: MBA/graduate degree

• Extra credit:

• Experience with data privacy and security, as protecting data is core to our business

• Experience in mobile app development, human-centered design and impact measurement

• Experience developing technology used in K-12 public school systems or other government entities

OUR IDEAL CANDIDATE

• Is excited about leveraging technology to make education equitable and accessible for underserved students

• Wants to create the best data-informed tools that have an immediate impact on learning outcomes for students furthest behind their peers

• Is motivated to both lead and roll up their sleeves in a small, startup-like nonprofit 

CULTURE AND VALUES

As a company with a strong commitment to making schools more inclusive of students and families from underserved backgrounds, we care deeply about creating an organization where diverse perspectives can thrive. We are a very high performing team, and we hold ourselves and each other to high standards. At the same time, we are collaborative & supportive, allowing us to tackle challenges together. 

BENEFITS

FEL offers competitive base compensation. Our benefits include generous vacation and holidays, top-tier health/dental/vision coverage, inclusive parental leave and 401(k) with up to 4% employer match. We take a remote-first approach with flexible hours (9am - 2pm PT overlap) and 1-2 team offsites to bring everyone together. 

PRESS & SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

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