New Leadership Roles Announced for Carrera, Ball, Sherrod, Hedrick, Branch, Rougeux, Powers, and Faktor

• By Kristal Kuykendall
• 03/01/23

Ed Tech Firms Name New Leaders: Carrera, Ball, Sherrod, Hedrick, Branch, Rougeux, Powers, and Faktor

Editor’s Note: THE Journal welcomes submissions about new hires and promotions among ed tech industry executives and K–12 public school administrators in the United States. Contributed news items will be published regularly on THEJournal.com; the archives can be accessed at any time at THEJournal.com/articles/list/people-on-the-move.

To submit news about new leadership and management changes at K–12 ed tech companies and at nonprofits in the K–12 ed tech space, complete the form at bit.ly/EdTechPeopleNews. To submit news about new hires and promotions among K–12 public schools administration, complete the form at bit.ly/K12AdminNews. News releases should be emailed to [email protected].

Pep Carrera is New CEO at Newsela

Instructional content platform Newsela has named Pep Carrera as its new chief executive officer.

Carrera, who most recently served as CEO at Nearpod, takes the reins from outgoing CEO and Newsela co-founder Matthew Gross, who will remain “actively involved” as executive chairman, according to a news release.

“Carrera is an accomplished leader in the K–12, higher education, and technology sectors with a proven track record of driving growth at scale, digitizing the textbook market, and building on the success of founder-led companies,” Newsela said. 

Carrera, who also serves on the board at Follett Higher Education, began his new role on Jan. 23.

Learn more at Newsela.com.

Instructure Taps Chris Ball as President and Chief Operating Officer

Instructure, the maker of Canvas LMS, has named Chris Ball as the company's new president and chief operating officer, a new role tasked with overseeing Instructure’s strategy and customer lifecycle, including marketing, revenue operations, sales, and customer experience, according to a news release. 

Ball will oversee the functions previously managed by outgoing Chief Revenue Officer Frank Maylett, the company said.

Ball’s career includes 28 years leading high-growth publicly traded companies: as general manager at Adobe Systems’ Americas Enterprise; as Entrepreneur In Residence at Lightspeed Venture Partners; and as EVP and general manager at SAP, Americas.

Learn more at Instructure.com.

Discovery Education Names 5 to Senior Leadership Team 

Discovery Education has announced several appointments to its senior leadership team, including:

• Kari Sherrodd has joined Discovery Education as the senior vice president of marketing. In her new role, she leads the company’s brand, campaigns, communications, creative, digital, events, field, and social impact marketing teams, according to a news release. Sherrodd’s career includes over two decades serving in marketing and communications leadership roles with well-established ed tech brands such as PowerSchool, LEGO Education, Microsoft, and Dell. Sherrodd also remains an active member of Chief, a private venture-backed U.S. technology startup working to increase women’s leadership. 
• Jill Hedrick is Discovery Education’s new chief revenue officer. A longtime tech executive, Hedrick brings 30 years of experience in high-growth ed tech organizations. Previously, she led revenue and customer-facing teams at NWEA, Turnitin, Schoology, and Edmentum, according to a news release.
• Chris Branch is the company’s new vice president of merger integration, where he will support the planning and execution of Discovery Education’s merger and acquisition efforts. Branch spent the last decade at EY-Parthenon focused on helping large and middle-market companies successfully conduct integrations, divestitures, and other complex transactions. Previously, Branch worked in several business development roles after serving in the U.S. Navy. 
• Lance Rougeux is Discovery Education’s new senior vice president of curriculum, instruction, and student engagement, overseeing the curriculum and engagement teams in the creation of instructional resources for classrooms. Following working on innovation and learning success at DE for 15 years, Rougeux joined the Product Team in 2019, where he led the creation of Discovery Education’s ready-to-use lessons and activities. Previously, Rougeux served as a policy specialist at the Pennsylvania Department of Education and as a public school teacher in Pennsylvania. 
• Lindsay Powers is the company’s new chief people officer, overseeing Discovery Education’s global Human Resources functions and serving as a strategic thought partner as part of the executive leadership team. 

Learn more at DiscoveryEducation.com.

Candice Faktor Joins DreamBox Learning Board of Directors

Supplemental instruction provider DreamBox Learning has announced that learning innovator and technology strategist Candice Faktor has joined its board of directors. 

Faktor brings “extensive experience building fast-growing digital platforms and SaaS companies as a founder, entrepreneur, and investor,” and will help DreamBox scale its reading and mathematics solutions, data and analytics, and professional development programming to more K–12 schools nationwide, according to a news release. 

Faktor is the co-CEO and co-founder of Disco, an all-in-one learning community platform; before helping launch Disco, Faktor led growth efforts at Wattpad, which expanded to over 80 million users before it was acquired by Naver for $660 million, DreamBox Learning said.

Learn more at Dreambox.com.