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Who We Are

Who We Are

The Curriki Story

Curriki is a nonprofit organization that has been revolutionizing the way learning content has been distributed and openly shared for over a decade.

  • 2004
  • 2006
  • 2017
  • 2020
  • 2022

Curriki

Curriki was founded by Sun Microsystems in March 2004 as the Global Education & Learning Community (GELC). Kim Jones co-founded Curriki with Scott McNealy, a founder of Sun Microsystems.

Sun Microsystems spun Curriki off as an independent nonprofit to focus on building a repository of curricula and to create an online community for this repository. The repository began indexing resources, ultimately garnering over 250,000 library materials through the next decade.

Curriki has over 500,000 educator, parent, and student members, and has garnered over 14 million visits from around the world.

Introducing CurrikiStudio

In July 2020, we launched CurrikiStudio, a free full-service learning content authoring suite designed to create dynamic and engaging curriculum online for seamless delivery to learners.

See what we are up to now!

See What’s Next

Meet Our Leadership Team

Pamela Schaffer

Chief Executive Officer

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Leo Cunha

Chief Technology Officer

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Mark McKinney

Director of

Partnerships

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Mike Francis

Chief of Product

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Caroline Benoist

Director of

Education &

Engagement

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Curriki’s Advisory Board

Debra Kerr

Debra Kerr

Dr. Brian Blanton

Dr. Brian Blanton

Dr. Knox Phillip

Dr. Knox Phillips

Professor Freedom Cheteni

Professor Freedom Cheteni

Laylah Bulman

Laylah Bulman

Matt Beaudreau

Matt Beaudreau

Crystal Hill

Crystal Hill

Robert Pearl Stark

Robert Pearl Starks

Board of Directors

Kim Jones

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Scott McNealy

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Phil Lebherz

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Juan Carlos Soto

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Bill Raduchel

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Larry Nelson

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Gene Banman

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Geoff Emery

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Gil Brady

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Jonathan Brusco

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Pamela Schaffer

Chief Executive Officer

Pam serves as Curriki’s CEO and brings over 30 years of a powerful combination of diverse technology and education sector experience to the position. Her passion for empowering learning and understanding of the power of technology provide her with a unique perspective in leading Curriki – who by its very nature seeks to leverage technology to impact learners and learning.

Pam started out her career as an engineer and has degrees from the University of California, Davis and USC. She has held leadership roles with organizations such as Hewlett Packard, Sybase, Informix, as well as several start-ups, two of whom were acquired by major technology players . She helped develop and bring to market numerous award-winning products, garnering several “’Product of the Year’’ awards from leading technology market influencers, including Business Week and ComputerWorld. As an executive, Pam has served as VP of Product & Marketing, Chief of Product and as a Managing Director in the Venture Capital world. After years of philanthropic work in education, Pam wanted to find a way to better use technology to create more engaging learning experiences. Her passion for education is demonstrated by her transition from Silicon Valley’s C-Suite to her successful efforts as an educator and in guiding technology innovation in Alameda County’s schools.

Pam has a passion for teamwork, and collaboration and sees that her role as CEO “… is to make space for the team to excel and to help make Curriki the leader in interactive learning solutions.” In her spare time, Pam is an avid sailor and took time out of her career to sail around the world, or as she puts it, “fixing broken things in exotic places”.

Leo Cunha

Chief Technology Officer

As Chief Technology Officer, Leo brings over 30 years of progressively challenging experience in the management, design, and development of mission-critical systems. His education technology experience spans over 15 years and includes the development and integration of systems for both K-12 and higher education, specifically in the areas of learning management, assessment and intervention, student information and ERP systems, and analytical processing for education. Leo is an avid supporter of open technologies and open education and is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Mark McKinney

Director of Partnerships

Mark serves as Curriki’s Director of Partnerships and brings to the position just shy of 30 years of experience across a variety of industries. An Industrial Engineer by degree (Go Clemson!), Mark is a highly collaborative technology professional with a track record of success spanning complex software and services sales, key account management, marketing, program management, product management, and operations.

Mark has a passion for storytelling, laughter, problem-solving, and building and maintaining strong relationships. Outside of work, Mark resides in the Upstate of South Carolina. He is married and a father of two children with a passion, enjoys golf, watching junior golf tournaments, and everything Clemson.

Caroline Benoist

Director of Education & Engagement

Caroline brings years of teaching, professional development, and curriculum design to her role as an instructional designer for CurrikiStudio. She has developed interactive learning experiences through CurrikiStudio for K-12, higher ed, and nonprofits, trained educators, district and college leadership on building effective and remote learning experience through CurrikiStudio.

Previously, Caroline was a classroom teacher and professional development provider in Texas. She developed highly effective curriculum training modules adopted across campuses throughout her district and it was adapted by Regional Directors providing materials to neighboring school districts. She provided Professional Development trainings across multiple campuses facilitating growth among fellow educators while identifying and improving effective teaching techniques. Caroline is an expert in using CurrikiStudio, a digital authoring tool that allows teachers, administrators, tutors, and industry to produce their own interactive and self-paced digital learning experiences.

Mike Francis

Chief of Product

Mike is a seasoned Information Technology professional with over 20 years of experience providing product and implementation leadership in Education Technology and other industries. Mike has extensive experience in technical project and program management including leading multidisciplinary teams, driving large-scale initiatives, overseeing budgets and timelines, and providing IT infrastructure guidance. Mike loves to exceed expectations by creating valuable partnerships and working well with people at all levels of the organization, including stakeholders, external partners, and clients.

Kim Jones

Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder, and former Chief Executive Officer

Kim is a recognized leader in the world of technology where she has extensive international experience in technology and education. She spent over 20 year at Sun Microsystems where she held a number of leadership positions. She was the President and Managing Director of Sun UK and Ireland where she managed a P&L of over $1B. She also built and led Sun’s first independent Global Line of Business for Education, Government, and Healthcare.

She has served on a number of boards – private, public and non-profit, including as Chairman of Curriki. She served on the John Wiley and Sons board for a number of years during which time she chaired Governance for five years. She also was on the board of Medirom, a privately held Japanese company that recently went public on NASDAQ. She currently sits on the Cornerstone on Demand Foundation Board of Directors and previously was a member of the MIT Open CourseWare Advisory Council, the Confederation of British Industry, the UK Corporate Leadership Group, Western Governors University Board of Trustees, the Jason Foundation for Education, and the World Bank Institute Advisory Board.

Kim has received numerous awards and recognition throughout her career including the prestigious YWCA Award for Women in Business, the Sun Microsystems Leadership Award, and was inducted into the Women in Technology Hall International Hall of Fame. Kim has an honorary PHD from University of Edinburgh, and graduated from the University of California, San Diego where she was named as one of their 50 Years, 50 leaders honorees.

Scott McNealy

Co-Founder

Scott McNealy, Co-Founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and served as CEO and Chairman of the Board for 22 years during which he piloted the company from startup to legendary Silicon Valley giant in computing infrastructure, network computing, and open-source software. Under his watch, Sun Microsystems employed approximately 235,000 worldwide. Sun was sold to Oracle in 2010 for $7.4 billion.

Scott McNealy is an outspoken advocate for personal liberty, small government, and free-market competition.

Phil Lebherz

Philip Lebherz has been described as a consummate family man, an innovative businessman, and a serial entrepreneur. Whichever you prefer, Phil can certainly be described as a renaissance man. His personal and professional story has left a rather noticeable impact on the California landscape. He took both LISI, a premier medical insurance distributor, and CoPower, a billing consolidation admin and marketing firm, from a vision to fruition over the last 30 years. These companies currently represent the most prominent benefits insurance carriers in the U.S. He recently sold them to AmWINS, the largest distributor of wholesale insurance products in America.

Juan Carlos Soto

Juan Carlos Soto serves on the board of various venture-backed companies, including Chairman of Vaadin, Inc, an Open Source Java Developer Tools company, and is a Venture Partner at Shasta Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He is a former Vice President of IBM Cloud Integration where he led several functional areas including Engineering, Product Management, Professional Services, and Customer Support. He joined IBM with their acquisition of StrongLoop, Inc., a leader in Open Source, Node.js technology for enterprises, where he served as CEO. Prior to StrongLoop, he was SVP and General Manager at Informatica where he led multiple businesses units including Informatica Cloud, a pioneer in B2B Enterprise SaaS. Prior to Informatica, Juan Carlos held several executive positions at Sun Microsystems including member of the Executive Management Group, CTO of Software, Vice President of Advanced Technologies and User Experience, Vice President of Cloud Computing and Developer Products, and Vice President of Market Development. He started his career at Hewlett Packard building scientific instrumentation and founded or held leadership positions in several startups including Skipstone Ventures and Diba, Inc.

Juan Carlos is passionate about helping entrepreneurs throughout the concept-to-exit journey, drawing from his experience across multiple functional areas leading large and small high-tech organizations. He has volunteered with several youth educations, development organizations including Junior Achievement / Project Business, Special Olympics, Future Scientists and Engineers of America (FSEA), Build.org, Big Brothers, and Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) athletics. He profoundly believes access to education is key to reaching one’s professional and personal potential and credits his career accomplishments to education, hard work, and luck. He holds an MS in Engineering Management from Stanford, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, and a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida.

Bill Raduchel

William J. Raduchel has over 50 years of experience with systems, software, and networks and has had a long career mixing technology, education and media. He has long experience and expertise in corporate governance. Raduchel joined AOL in September 1999 from Sun Microsystems, Inc., where he was chief strategy officer and a member of its executive committee. In his eleven years at Sun, he also served as chief information officer, chief financial officer, acting vice president of human resources and vice president of corporate planning and development and oversaw relationships with the major Japanese partners. There he was recognized separately as CIO of the year and as best CFO in the computer industry. In addition, he has held senior executive roles at Xerox Corporation and McGraw-Hill, Inc.

Larry Nelson

Larry Nelson leads Microsoft’s Worldwide Education Partner strategy within its Public Sector Business Unit, for both Primary/Secondary and Higher Education. Previous to this role, Nelson led Microsoft’s Worldwide Primary/Secondary Education strategy. Prior to joining Microsoft, Nelson led strategic planning of telecom services for the University Librarian at Stanford University, and before that, he was a Director at Sun Microsystems where he also served as acting Executive Director of the Global Education & Learning Community (GELC, now known as Curriki) where he managed the creation of GELC as an independent nonprofit corporation. Nelson is Secretary and Treasurer of the Curriki Board of Directors and a past member of the NEA Foundation Board of Directors, SIF Executive Board, and SPA Education Board. He earned a Masters in business administration from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s degree from Vassar College.

Gene Banman

Gene, now retired, has been a serial CEO for the past 20 years having been at the helm of four companies. NetContinuum developed an application layer firewall appliance for large enterprise and web businesses and was sold to Barracuda Networks. Zero Motorcycles is the leading electric motorcycle in the world and Gene remains on their Board of Directors. ClearPower Systems designed a waste heat recovery electric power generation system and was sold to Questor Technologies. DriveScale made data center management software and was sold to Twitter. Prior to his entrepreneurial activities, Gene was a member of the senior management team at Sun Microsystems and was Sr. Vice President/General Manager of the $3 billion/year Desktop Systems group.

Geoffrey Emery

After working for five years at major law firms in New York and California, Geoff Emery purchased a failing luxury car dealership in Beverly Hills, California, and later purchased other similarly non performing businesses. Twenty-five years later, Beverly Hills Porsche and Santa Monica Audi are now two of the largest luxury car dealerships in the United States, collectively grossing over $300 million in revenue in 2015.

Gil Brady

Currently, President at Nativity Prep Academy of San Diego, Brady is an experienced Partner with a demonstrated history of working in the management consulting industry. Skilled in Educational Leadership, Executive Development, Business Planning, Sales, Organizational Learning, and Training Delivery. Strong entrepreneurship professional with a Doctor of Education (EdD) focused in Executive Leadership from The George Washington University.

Jonathon Brusco

Jonathan Brusco has sixteen years of experience in a variety of education-focused roles. He currently serves as the Director of Instructional Technology & Maker Education at Pinewood School in Los Altos, CA, where he leads technology integration efforts and manages the K-12 Coding and Maker Education programs across their three campuses. He also serves on the Board of Trustees at Gavilan College, a Bay Area community college with 9,000 students as well as an on-site top-performing dual enrollment high school. He has held this elected office since 2012 and has served terms as Vice President and President of the Board.

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