Ceo
CurrentI founded Academic Innovations in 1990 to help high school and college educators prepare students for self-sufficient futures. Each year, more than 200,000 students complete comprehensive guidance courses based on the Career Choices series and the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® Follow Up Modules I have authored and co-authored. HOW IT STARTEDWhile struggling to support myself through college in the early 1970s, I envisioned someday creating a curriculum that high schools could use to motivate young people to stay in school and prepare themselves for a career and a satisfying life. In 1990, when I finally had the financial reserves to capitalize on my dream, I started Academic Innovations from my home office, fulfilling the initial stream of orders from my garage. Today, Academic Innovations works with hundreds of high schools across the country to help prepare students for self-sufficient futures.Working with Dr. Rebecca Dedmond of The George Washington University in 2005, I helped develop the Freshman Transition Initiative. In 2009 I partnered with the leadership of Santa Barbara City College's Dual Enrollment Department to evolve the Freshman Transition Initiative model and develop the curriculum strategies for the college's Dual Enrollment Freshman Transition course. This work expanded in 2012 to the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® Initiative and, in 2014, to the Get Focused…Stay Focused!® National Resource Center. HOW IT'S GOINGToday, with more than 2.5 million books in print, my team and I continue to champion the high tech/high touch approach to learning with the conviction that student/teacher relationships are the key to student success.
