US K-12 Education Innovation with Katie Boody-Adorno from LEANLAB Education

In this episode of Tech Can’t Save Us, CEO and Co-Founder of Literal Humans Paul David talks to Katie Boody-Adorno, Founder of LEANLAB Education, a Kansas City-based nonprofit that builds communities and launches transformational innovations into K-12 schools.

Katie is a former teacher with deep expertise in education who always finds herself in the startup phase of organizations. She founded LEANLAB to pair innovative solutions with the most pressing needs of K-12 schools. LEANLAB is supported by heavy-hitters in education philanthropy like the Gates Foundation and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative.

Katie and Paul discussed systemic challenges in the edtech space including the mismatch between supply and demand as well as structural issues within the procurement process that hamper real innovation in schools. As the leader of LEANLAB, Katie offers up a bold new vision for subverting current paradigms of education innovation by grounding the development of new edtech products in the lived experiences and needs of the local community.

Her team supports entrepreneurs through the co-design process, working hand-in-hand with schools and communities to build and deploy edtech innovations from the ground up rather than the top down. Listen in to hear about the unique edtech solutions her team has helped to launch!