Behind our software is a group of passionate people working to build a better today for educators and a better future for today’s students. Learn more about our mission, who we are, and what people around the world are saying about Alma.
State & District Digital Learning Director, Alliance for Excellent Education
Innovator of the Year
Senior Fellow at International Center for Leadership in Education
Teacher of the Year
Secondary Principal of the Year
Top 50 Educational Innovator
Co-Founder + Chief Executive Officer
Co-Founder
Co-Founder +VP of Services
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Fahad leads Alma's Business Development needs with a strong focus on establishing partnerships that will enhance Alma's presence in the marketplace. Prior to joining Alma, Fahad was the founder and CEO of Always Prepped, which enabled school administrators and teachers to integrate and analyze student data from various ed-tech platforms in one unified dashboard.
Fahad has more than ten years of experience in the education technology industry. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Daylert, a mobile based ed-tech platform for the higher education vertical that enabled college students to better manage their time with the ability to have institutions intervene before a student was at risk of dropping out. Daylert company was acquired in 2008 by Intelliworks (a Hobsons company) where Fahad served as Vice President of Business Development. He earned his B.A. from Virginia Tech University in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Denton leads a developer and quality assurance team with over 50 combined years of development experience. He oversees daily and long term planning of technical aspects across the company, including product development, implementation, customer service and sales. Denton most recently served as VP, Global Markets & Operations at Bank of America. He has worked in management positions for a broad range of companies from Fortune 500 businesses, including TD Ameritrade and Merrill Lynch, to start-up ventures. Denton has diverse technology architecture experience and an agnostic approach to solution design and brings strong analytical, planning and management skills to Alma. He has a proven track record of quick and effective adaptation to changing business climates, technological challenges and rapidly evolving customer demands. Denton received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona.
Mike leads Alma's product development and implementation teams to ensure the company's offerings meet the evolving needs of schools with a strong focus on the user experience. Prior to joining Alma, Michael co-founded Backstory, which enables sites to get to know their visitors and why they're visiting and then customize their site on the fly to provide a fully personalized experience.
Mike has more than nine years experience in IT management and software development. Previously, he worked as an associate at Pillsbury and Cooley in their technology practices, where he focused on early stage companies and venture capital financings. He earned his J.D. from New York University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College.
Brad brings vast experience scaling emerging technology companies into significantly sized entities. Brad's leadership has driven tremendous revenue growth at numerous companies, including Verve, Videology, MTV Networks, and Advertising.com. Previous to his business career, Brad was a corporate attorney at Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
Michael is a managing partner and founder of pe-top ltd. and supports a variety of top tier private equity funds on the improvement of their portfolio companies. Previously, Michael worked as a director at Terra-Firma, a private equity company. Michael has significant operating and lean management experience as a business leader, including running businesses across a variety of industries for Crane Merchandising Systems, Danaher Corp, and Infinis. Michael has also worked as a principal for the Boston Consulting Group.
Terry is a leading ed-tech visionary with over 30 years experience leading industry critical ed-tech companies. Terry has led Apple Education, Jostens Learning, AOL Education, and Compass Learning. She has sat on Board of Renaissance Learning, Nobel Learning, and numerous other highly successful Ed-Tech companies.
Elizabeth has worked at Alma since the company was founded. As the Vice President of Customer Engagement, she leads the customer service and account management teams. Elizabeth is responsible for customer relationship management, collecting and amplifying customer feedback, market research and sales.
Elizabeth brings more than 10 years of experience in business development, management and entrepreneurship to the Alma team. She is also active in the community of female leaders as a Fellow of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs. Elizabeth earned a Bachelor of Science from Philadelphia University.
Andrew founded Alma based on the belief that schools deserve a modern, future-ready technology system that provides the core administrative and classroom management needs in one intuitive, flexible platform. As CEO, Andrew sets long-term strategy and leads team development and collaboration to plan and meet product development goals. Under his leadership, Alma has achieved optimum growth - and is now in 43 states and 35 countries. Alma is now widely recognized as the best-in-class SIS solution available on the market.
Before starting Alma, Andrew served in several financial and corporate management positions, including founding a successful analytical instrumentation company and leading numerous acquisitions for Danaher Corporation. As an early member of the Advertising.com team, he lead the venture investment raise for the company and helped lay the foundation for the company's long-term success. Andrew's passion for education began early in his professional career when he taught middle school at Link Community School in Newark, NJ. Andrew earned an MBA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University.
Eric is a Senior Fellow and Thought Leader on Digital Leadership with the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE) and Scholastic Achievement Partners (SAP). He also maintains a presence as a practitioner by serving as the K-12 Director of Technology and Innovation in the Spotswood School District (NJ). Prior to this, Eric was the award-winning Principal at New Milford High School. Under his leadership, his school became a globally recognized model for innovative practices. Eric oversaw the successful implementation of several sustainable change initiatives that radically transformed the learning culture at his school while increasing achievement.
Eric's work focuses on leading and learning in the digital age as a model for moving schools and districts forward. This has led to the formation of the Pillars of Digital Leadership, a framework for all educators to initiate sustainable change to transform school cultures. As a result, Eric has emerged as an innovative leader, best selling author, and sought after speaker. His main focus is the use of social media and web 2.0 technology as tools to facilitate student learning, improve communications with stakeholders, enhance public relations, create a positive brand presence, discover opportunity, transform learning spaces, and help educators grow professionally.
Eric is a CDE Top 30 award recipient (2014), Bammy Award winner (2013), NASSP Digital Principal Award winner (2012), PDK Emerging Leader Award recipient (2012), winner of Learning Forward's Excellence in Professional Practice Award (2012), Google Certified Teacher, Adobe Education Leader, and ASCD 2011 Conference Scholar. He has authored and co-authored the following:
He has also contributed on education for the Huffington Post, co-created the Edscape Conference, sits on the FEA Board of Directors, and was named to the NSBA "20 to Watch" list in 2010 for technology leadership. TIME Magazine also identified Eric as having one of the 140 Best Twitter Feeds in 2014. He now presents and speaks nationally to assist other school leaders embrace and effectively utilize technology. His blog, A Principal's Reflections, was selected as Best School Administrator Blog in 2013 and 2011 by Edublogs. It was also recognized with an Editor’s Choice Content Award in 2014 by Smartbrief Education.
Erin Klein is an award winning educator, national keynote speaker, author, and mother who has been twice selected to serve on the Scholastic, Inc. Top Teaching Team based in New York. Her recent publication, Amazing Grades, was a collaboration with experts from 13 countries around the world. She travels the country speaking about the power of student voice, how meaningful technology integration can enhance learning experiences, and the impact of classroom design on today’s learner.
Klein is certified in Brain Gym, Educational Kinesiology, and has studied under consultants from The Center for Effective Learning to understand how design affects cognition and learning. She serves as a classroom design consultant and creative partner for the publishing company, Carson-Dellosa. Some of her articles and interviews on design for education and technology tools for the classroom can be found on Smartblogs for Education, MindShift, Scholastic, Edudemic, Edutopia, EdSurge, and EdReach.
Klein served for the past three years as the state’s technology chairperson for the Michigan Reading Association and is the 2014 recipient of the MACUL Pre-K - 12 Teacher of the Year for Michigan. In 2013, Klein was also awarded her district’s Teacher of the Year award. She currently serves on the advisory board for Remind101 in San Francisco and is an organizer for the EdCamp Detroit Annual Educational unConference. Among Klein’s accomplishments, she was also recognized as a SMART Technologies Exemplary Educator, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) 2012 Social Media Influencer, a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future, ASCD Emerging Leader, and a member of The National Writing Project. In the summer of 2014, Klein was accepted into The Teacher’s College at Columbia University to advance her studies in reading and writing workshop.
Klein has also hosted webinars for The United States Department of Education to share her perspective on Future Ready Schools. Most recently, she was one of nine professionals selected to be a featured speaker on Future Ready Schools at the national Digital Learning Day in Washington D.C. For the past two years, Klein has been invited to Washington D.C. to represent the BAM 100 Influential Voice in Education.
In 2014, Klein was selected to serve on the state of Michigan’s Voice Fellowship, through America Achieves. Through this initiative, she was invited to be part of the national Teach to Lead summits through The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the United States Department of Education where she continues to work on shaping teacher leadership across the country. She has her Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, currently teaches at the elementary level, and lives in Michigan with her family.
Klein's work can be found on her award-winning educational blog, Kleinspiration.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @KleinErin.
Jimmy Casas is in his 21st year of administrative leadership. He received his BA in Spanish and Master’s in Teaching from the University of Iowa and his Master’s in Administrative Leadership from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee. Jimmy is currently working on his ED.S at the University of Iowa and serves as an adjunct professor for Drake University, teaching a graduate course on Educational Leadership. Jimmy has served as principal at Bettendorf High School in Bettendorf, Iowa for the last thirteen years. His passion for teaching and learning, coupled with a vision for developing a community of leaders, has procured a culture of excellence and high standards for learning amid a positive school culture for students and staff. Jimmy’s core purpose lies in serving others. He continues to give back to his profession by speaking and presenting at the local, state and national levels and school districts around the country. He was named the 2012 Iowa Secondary Principal of the Year and was selected as one of three finalists for NASSP 2013 National Secondary Principal of the Year. In 2013 he received the Bammy Educators Voice Award as the Secondary School Principal of the Year. In 2014, Jimmy was invited to the White House to speak on the Future Ready Schools pledge. He is the Co-Founder of EdCampIowa and also the Co-Founder & Co-Moderator of #IAedchat, moderating the on-line discussion chat every Sunday evening at 8:00 p.m. CST. Finally, Jimmy recently co-authored a book with Todd Whitaker and Jeff Zoul entitled, “What Connected Educators Do Differently.”
Thomas C. Murray serves as the state and district digital learning director for the Alliance for Excellent Education located in Washington, DC. He has testified before the United States Congress and works alongside that body and the US Senate, the US Department of Education and state departments of education, corporations, and school districts throughout the country to implement digital learning while helping to lead Future Ready, Project 24 and Digital Learning Day. Murray’s experiences in K–12 digital leadership, which include implementing a 1:1 program, BYOD, blended learning, and a K–12 cyber school where he served as the director of technology and cyber education for the Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have been recognized nationally. He is also the co-author of the recent release, Leading Professional Learning; Tools to Connect and Empower Teachers (Corwin, 2015), and serves as a school district consultant for digital learning planning and implementation.
A former CIO and school principal, Murray is passionate about proper digital learning implementation and personalized professional learning. He was the recipient of the Blended Schools Network Leadership Award, named one of the top 16 “forward thinking EdTech leaders in the country,” named one of the “top 100 influential voices in education,” has been featured in Tech & Learning magazine’s Leadership Profile, and has appeared on various television shows. Murray’s cyber- and blended-learning programs have been highlighted by Forbes.com, T.H.E. Journal, District Administration magazine, Project Red, Tech & Learning magazine, the Innosight Institute, and iNACOL, among others, and on Digital Learning Day in both 2013 and 2014. He also serves on the advisory board for T.H.E. Journal and Remind. Murray is the cofounder of #edtechchat, a weekly educational technology Twitter forum, where hundreds of educators from around the world discuss digital learning. As a follow-up, his weekly show, #edtechchat radio on the BAM Radio Network, is available on iTunes and is regularly one of the top downloaded education podcasts. Connect with him on Twitter @thomascmurray or at www.thomascmurray.com.
Adam Bellow is one of today’s leading speakers on educational technology and infusing technology to aid school reformation. He is the founder of both eduTecher and eduClipper. In addition to these free resources, Adam launched the popular Change the World student-focused charity campaign. Bellow was honored by ISTE in 2010 as an emerging leader and then again in 2011 when he was named Outstanding Young Educator of the year. In 2014, he was a recipient of the Making IT Happen award by ISTE, as well as Innovator of the Year recognition from the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences. Adam is currently serving as CEO of eduClipper, the edtech startup that he founded in 2012. eduClipper is a web tool focused on helping students and teachers find, share, and build valid learning experiences in a K-12 safe educational social platform. He lives in New York with his wife and two awesome boys.
Steven Anderson is a Dad, learning evangelist, educator, speaker, and author.
As a former classroom teacher and Director of Instructional Technology, Steven is highly sought after for his expertise in educational technology integration and using social media for learning. As @web20classroom, he regularly travels the country talking to schools and districts about the use of Social Media in the classroom and how they can better serve students through technology.
Steven has been a presenter and keynoter at several national and international educational conferences, including ISTE, ASCD, FETC, WISE, VSTE as well as numerous state and local conferences. Steven is the author of 3 books:
Steven is also responsible in helping create #edchat, a weekly education discussion on Twitter that boasts over 500 weekly participants.
Steven has been recognized with the the 2009 and 2011 Edublogs, Twitterer of The Year Award, a "Top 50 Educational Innovators" award from the Center For Digital Education, a Microsoft Heros of Education award, along with a 2013 Bammy Award, recognized worldwide as the Educational Emmy, for his work with #edchat.
We are a team of entrepreneurs, and every member is critical to our mission. We believe that the work we are doing will have an impact on society, and as such, we operate on a foundation of mutual respect, trust, accountability and continuous improvement. As individuals, we each take ownership over our roles and responsibilities and drive them until they are done well.
We value our employees. Our benefits include fair pay, flexible vacations, comprehensive medical benefits, and the tools and support to get the job done right.
We're always looking for great people! Want to work for Alma, but don’t see a position that fits your qualifications at this time? Send us your resume and cover letter. We'd love to talk.
Students always come first. We are here to improve the education of students. Our focus is on the whole student - we build tools that ultimately help enrich both their intellectual and emotional growth. We do this by empowering the greatest learning resource that students have at school: educators.
We believe that educators and parents best understand how to help our children grow intellectually and socially. Our job is to empower educators with more time and better data to enhance whatever style of learning they deem best for their students.
Our product designs are based on research done at schools. Our product development process starts and ends by interviewing each constituency in schools (administrators, teachers, students, and parents) and creatively developing solutions that empower the school and parents. While this approach requires enormous amounts of time and energy, we feel it necessary to produce a world-class software platform with real impact on schools and students.
What busywork would you like to offload on Alma? What information helps you improve student performance - to whom, when, where and how should this information ideally be presented? What works well at your school? What was your most painful headache today, this week, this month? If you have any suggestions for us, let us know here or, better yet, have a conversation with us.
We look for and identify innovative best practices that are happening in schools. We then build our tools to allow schools to more easily adopt these best practices, if the schools feel it is right for them.
Every educator must perform a wide spectrum of activities that range from busywork to highly nuanced interactions with students and fellow educators. We build well-designed tools that reduce the time and energy the busywork requires, leaving beneficial face-to-face interactions to educators.
Every day we make our platform, customer service, communications, and process better. Our software is never "done," as we will keep further refining and developing. We will never stop pushing to better serve and communicate with our clients. As an organization, we celebrate finding ways to get better and implementing those improvements.
We are a team of entrepreneurs and educators. Each team member represents a critical piece in determining the success of our company. As individuals, we take ownership over our roles and responsibilities and drive them until they are done well. As a team, our solutions will have a societal impact. Accordingly, we operate with a tremendous amount of mutual respect and accountability.
That’s why we signed the Student Privacy Pledge, which is helping to safeguard student privacy regarding the collection, maintenance, and use of student personal information.
Learn more about the Student Privacy PledgeAlma UK’s cutting-edge MIS replaces outdated systems that are no longer equipped to meet the real demands of modern education…
Alma has been selected as the K-12 Student and School Data Collection Platform for the state of New Hampshire.
Alma has been selected as the K-12 Student and School Data Collection Platform for the state of New Hampshire.
Alma Student Information System announces the addition of Invoice Plans to the platform’s highly intuitive payment platform, Fees. Built to streamline secure tuition plans, flexible fees, and expedited payment collection, Alma’s fees platform allows schools to schedule and generate one-time as well as recurring invoices. Families can pay in full or make parity payments, including tuition plans. This update creates equitable opportunities for families to spread out payments over time so that students can participate in activities that may have previously been out-of-budget. Thanks to user feedback, the additional invoicing options have been created to increase flexibility for both families and schools to manage funds.
Families access fee management through Alma’s convenient online and mobile parent app, Alma Now, while Alma’s backend handles invoicing and payment processing securely in an all-in-one platform. Built to adapt to fit schools’ unique needs, fee management allows schools to increase on-time collections, reduce administrative time, and improve tracking and reporting of payment activity.
With Invoice Plans, administrators can configure a set of standard invoice plans which can then be assigned to students individually or in bulk. Custom invoice plans can also be created and assigned as needed. Families view the details of all invoice plans that have been assigned to their student so they know what they’re expected to pay and when.
At Alma, family engagement is critical to student success. Alma’s Fee Management is an end-to-end solution that streamlines and expands opportunities to budget for school expenses and enrichment experiences for all families.
Track school operations and monitor emerging student patterns to unfold your school’s data story.
Spanish speaking families and students are first to have immediate access.
Due to extraordinary demand for easier SIS implementation, Alma ushers in a new systems transition process for K-12 schools and districts
Intuitive tool seamlessly integrates schools’ mission critical programming into Alma SIS
The Department of Education (DOE) established Alma as a state-approved SIS vendor that expertly provides the infrastructure required to collect, track and report student data on behalf of the Commonwealth.
Utilizing Alma’s all new GPA system, schools and districts can create their own rubric scales, labels and descriptions, and accurately map them to grade point values.
“I spent five years in the field for Alma, representing the best user experience in SIS, and helping engineer solutions with integrations that gave data interoperability to schools and districts wanting the sort of performance I yearned for when I was a teacher and administrator.” – Eric Nentrup
Alma has achieved optimum growth – and is now in 45 states and 50 countries. It is now widely recognized as among the best-in-class SIS solutions available on the education market.
Alma SIS provides foundational support for schools to confidently move forward whether in-person, at home or anywhere in between.
In March, West Central found itself in a unique situation, like so many other districts in this current pandemic. Facing many challenges, community educators quickly pivoted from in-class instruction to a new distance learning model …
As a steadily growing international student information system, Alma stands out in two key ways:
• Intuitive and efficient UI/UX in an SIS available to educators and the families
• As a comprehensively modern engineering feat in the edtech enterprise software space