Team

Laurie Racine
Co-Founder & Managing Director
A seasoned entrepreneur, Laurie has started or secured funding for a variety of transformative nonprofit and for-profit organizations. She is a founder of dotSUB and was a principal at Eyespot, two tech start-ups in the media space. As a funder, Laurie managed a private endeavor endowed by the founders of Red Hat where she helped launch Lulu Press, Creative Commons, ibiblio and Public Knowledge, the leading public interest group focused on issues of the digital age. In addition to her history as an entrepreneur and dealmaker, Laurie has held several leadership roles in academia and nonprofits: senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications, director of Creative Commons, director of the Tribeca Institute, co-founder and chair of Public Knowledge, and chair of Teachers Without Borders, president of DocArts, the corporation that presents the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and executive director of the Health Sector Management Program at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Laurie received a B.A. from New York University and conducted graduate work in human genetics at University of California, Berkeley.

Diana Rhoten
Co-Founder & Managing Director

How is existing knowledge shared? How is new knowledge created? As a researcher and strategist, Diana has dedicated her professional life to exploring these questions and testing out answers. Diana has been designing and evaluating educational policies and programs, organizations and technologies since she began her career as an educational analyst in Massachusetts. Over the last decade, Diana has been faculty at the Stanford School of Education, co-director of a nonprofit research institute dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration, and consultant to a host of large educational institutions seeking to innovate. She has also been the founder of three different programs focused on the future of learning at both the Social Science Research Council and the National Science Foundation. Diana has published in numerous journals and most recently co-edited a volume on the future of higher education called Knowledge Matters. She earned a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Educational Policy and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University, as well as an M.Ed. from Harvard University and an A.B. from Brown University.

 Phoenix M. Wang
Co-Founder & Managing Director

Phoenix has spent her career enabling people to achieve and lead transformative change. Adept at strategic, product and operational plans, Phoenix has spearheaded a range of initiatives, from corporate systems integration to new media ventures to systemic change in urban school districts. She spent her early career in business as a team leader on large-scale organizational change projects at Accenture Consulting and, later, as vice president of Strategic Operations at iVillage Inc. Since joining the field of education, Phoenix has been a relentless advocate for using technology to better serve students and bring about equality of opportunity. Phoenix was formerly an education program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, directing investment strategies aimed at improving instructional practices and using digital media to enhance learning. Phoenix’s passion for social change began with grassroots organizing while pursuing a B.A. from Williams College and M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.