ramona pierson

CEO of Pierson Labs / Declara.

Focused on ending poverty in our lifetime through learning. (oh my)

Past CEO for SynapticMash and Chief Science Officer for Promethean.

intro’d to Ramona via John sharing this on fb:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-26/declara-co-founder-ramona-piersons-comeback-odyssey

We’re flipping the equation so that people can become their own consultants,” says González, who used to work as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH). “And we help people keep on learning, instead of leaving them with little more than a pretty-looking PowerPoint dec

Over time, and more than 100 surgeries, Pierson’s body improved. She had procedures to fix her eye socket, nose, and teeth. “One of my doctors did Wilt Chamberlain’s nose,” Pierson says. “My face seemed to come together well. Part of my butt is in my face.” Her skills improved, too, and she realized it was time to try and leave the home. “I just kept moving forward,” she says.
 
We’ve all met people who seem to make more of their years than the rest of us. They become experts at whatever they try and collect friends wherever they go. Driven, in part, by a maniacal fear that she had fallen behind the world, Pierson became one of those people.

 “I never thought I’d be living that long, so I figured, ‘I am going to wear this s-‍-‍- out,’ ” she says.

Then, with the help of a guide dog, she spent two years studying psychology at Fort Lewis College in Colorado. Following her undergraduate work, she got a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco, a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Stanford University and Palo Alto University, and attended the Danforth educational leadership program at the University of Washington.

lot of this stuff failed, but they would move my life forward incrementally in a way,” she says. “Some of the surgeries were great, and I would really take off after them.”

Using The Source, parents could log on to a secure website and check their kids’ performance, seeing not just grades but test scores, attendance records, and notes from teacher

imagine the source.. getting data from people talking to themselves everyday.. their curiosities.. seeking eudaimonia.. not attendance or test scores..

Pierson went on to become the chief science officer and head of policy at Promethean, until she left last year to start Declara.

Using Declara, teachers can pull up graphical displays that show hot topics among their colleagues, click on something like “8th grade math” and find tests and videos that other teachers have recommended, and, most important, reach out directly to their peers all over the country. “It’s like having a huge staff room,” says Mann. “People are getting answers to things that the other teachers in their school didn’t know.”

Naomi Hoops, an octogenarian former school custodian who got to know Pierson at the community college in Colorado. “I thought she was going to squeeze the life out of me,” Hoops says. “She is that same old Ramona I first met.”

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here she is at tedxdu 2011:

An unexpected place of healing

she says to tedx listeners, describing why they sent her to a senior center: ..

think of all the skills and talent in this room right now – that’s what a senior center has, with one advantage – wisdom

i was able to return to college … because of the senior citizens that invested in me…

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interview after tedxdu

when asked how did you do this, Ramona:

i invented things to help me. because of that i believe in myself as an inventor.

i fell in love with education because at one point… visited a classroom where a teacher was trying to differentiate a classroom for 150 students.. wondered if i could get neuro-processing data…

dang – so she went on to get ed degree.. but what if it’s the neuro-processing data that’s more fitting with the human spirit.. and would encourage less proving and more – finding/doing the things we can’t not do..

we moved from trying to just service ed as it is to personalizing it – snyapse

the du learning echo system – deliver content information data – just in time – learning progressions for students and teachers

the algorithm moves content/curriculum that’s out their to reflect kids learning needs

Mitra’s son?

pd – map teachers as well.. so they can be one step ahead of their students

pilot – in indiana – personalized learning environment where schedule changed every day around their learning needs

so imagining declara.. but following whimsy .. rather than core curriculum et al

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her TED page:

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interview oct 2013:

importance on …..

radical collaboration..

what if radical collaboration comes more (and is more sustainable) from there being no agenda. like if the key to radical collaboration is listening.. and the key to listening is.. no agenda.

as to poverty – focus feeding off attachment and authenticity – rather than money or credentials or even material needs..

platform to redefine and differentiate for the individual .. for uni’s and companies

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dec 2013 write up:

What intrigued me about Pierson’s approach is that she and her colleagues aren’t always trying to match supposedly similar users who should gravitate toward the same content. Just the opposite. Declara provides ways to see content favored by users with highly different tastes. In short, Declara brings serendipity back into search.

A case in point: Declara’s biggest market at present is Australia, where the company’s technology is being used to help teachers master and refine curriculum. 

Right now, some of Declara’s largest customers are government-associated entities in Australia, Chile and Mexico, chiefly in education. The company’s expansion plan stretches more broadly, including large corporations in knowledge-intensive fields such as pharmaceuticals. But Pierson says that in the education sector, she’s most excited about the non-U.S. opportunities.

The U.S. education sector is highly fragmented and politicized; it’s hard to win major contracts for  radically new approaches without a lot of tussles. By contrast, in countries such as Chile and Australia, she says, national authorities can embrace new tools quite quickly and decisively.

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Published on Sep 29, 2014

Richard Newton Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series 

24 min – building cognitive graph to get 360 degree of individual rather than one snippet of time test

user has learning journal

beta users in jan.. then public in april/may – to follow the learner

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oct 2014:

http://fusion.net/video/23878/ramona-pierson-was-blind-for-11-years-and-then-recovered-her-vision-thanks-to-a-surgery/

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find/follow Ramona:

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Ramona is co-founder and ceo of delcara:

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co-founder – Nelson Gonzalez

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Alex Hayes?