Jul 13, 2026 · 56 min · 12 segments
Since COVID, Education Technology (and education in general) has been a really hot topic in the news. It's a topic Im personally quite passionate about so I was really excitred to dig in with Jess…
Jess Weems-ThibaultGuest
Rick ColuccioHost
Emmett CullenGuest
Jess, you mentioned sort of your trajectory at the company, which I feel is a little bit unorthodox in a good way.
But before we get into too much of that, can we just even on a high level define for people listening, what is ed tech today? What are some changes maybe that you've seen in that landscape, maybe since COVID or recently? How are you guys feeling about it?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the unique things about ed tech and why it's so hard to define is that it's not necessarily its own sector.
It's like splices of dozens of sectors, right? There's a lot of bigger companies that have an ed tech focused focus product or a service or um you know team then and it's um I think also people often think that ed tech is just tech that interfaces with students or maybe just technology that is supposed to help with learning or content delivery or online learning.
And at least the way we define it, right? And I would say most of the sector defines itself by technology.
It's the vendors, it's the products and services that are built specifically for learning, whether it's for children or college, graduate or adults even.
The thing that makes it unique, I think, is that it is tied to fundamental
like, what are you going to do with your life, right? what do we promise our children for the future, right? And it's about people's livelihood, ultimately, right? It's about employability.
Why do we educate, right? Why? So that people can lead fulfilling lives, right? So people can contribute.
But ultimately, that also comes down to just being... ready for careers of tomorrow, which is a question nobody really knows how to answer right now as far as what are the jobs of tomorrow.
But yeah, I mean, it's definitely learning focused, but there's also a whole aspect of it.
There's student safety, right? There's transportation, there's food services, there's payment processing.
there's HR software, there's student information system software, right? I mean, it's just every single aspect of learning has specialized tools for it because that whole learning space I mean, it's, it's, I think a good analogy is that it's much like healthcare, right? I mean, healthcare, health tech, med tech, right? I mean, that's, it's, you know, everything has to be kind of built specialty for delivering healthcare.
Jess, you mentioned sort of your trajectory at the company, which I feel is a little bit unorthodox in a good way.
But before we get into too much of that, can we just even on a high level define for people listening, what is ed tech today? What are some changes maybe that you've seen in that landscape, maybe since COVID or recently? How are you guys feeling about it?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the unique things about ed tech and why it's so hard to define is that it's not necessarily its own sector.
It's like splices of dozens of sectors, right? There's a lot of bigger companies that have an ed tech focused focus product or a service or um you know team then and it's um I think also people often think that ed tech is just tech that interfaces with students or maybe just technology that is supposed to help with learning or content delivery or online learning.
And at least the way we define it, right? And I would say most of the sector defines itself by technology.
It's the vendors, it's the products and services that are built specifically for learning, whether it's for children or college, graduate or adults even.
The thing that makes it unique, I think, is that it is tied to fundamental
like, what are you going to do with your life, right? what do we promise our children for the future, right? And it's about people's livelihood, ultimately, right? It's about employability.
Why do we educate, right? Why? So that people can lead fulfilling lives, right? So people can contribute.
But ultimately, that also comes down to just being... ready for careers of tomorrow, which is a question nobody really knows how to answer right now as far as what are the jobs of tomorrow.
But yeah, I mean, it's definitely learning focused, but there's also a whole aspect of it.
There's student safety, right? There's transportation, there's food services, there's payment processing.
there's HR software, there's student information system software, right? I mean, it's just every single aspect of learning has specialized tools for it because that whole learning space I mean, it's, it's, I think a good analogy is that it's much like healthcare, right? I mean, healthcare, health tech, med tech, right? I mean, that's, it's, you know, everything has to be kind of built specialty for delivering healthcare.
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