The Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with the School of Education, co-sponsored the William H. Hedeman Lecture and the International Teaching and Global Leadership (ITGL) Hackathon. These events bridge the gap between education and entrepreneurship, providing students with the tools, support, and opportunities to innovate and make a meaningful impact in education.
William H. Hedeman Lecture 2025
Honoring the legacy of Hedeman, who was a skilled negotiator and taught for several years at Johns Hopkins, this year’s lecture featured School of Education Dean Christopher Morphew and alumna Jess Gartner. Gartner founded the K12 financial planning software platform Allovue, which was acquired by PowerSchool. She is now the group vice president of Allovue and enterprise resource planning at PowerSchool. One of the highlights of Gartner’s talk surrounded entrepreneurial innovation in the education technology sector. The event was co-sponsored by the School of Education, the Carey Business School, and the Pava Center.
International Teaching and Global Leadership (ITGL) Hackathon
During the ITGL Hackathon, students chose a startup and created ideas around education services, consumer goods, and more. The Pava Center’s Spark and Fuel alumna Chinat Yu helped facilitate the event.
“Hackathons are a great nourishing ground for people interested in entrepreneurship,” Yu said. “It allows students to build things important to their lives and community.”
Yu also emphasized the motivation and external community that hackathons generate, but noted these events can often feel inaccessible to students without computer science backgrounds.
“The question is, how do you potentially provide continuous support in terms of entrepreneurial education? This is what we’ve done differently at the ITGL hackathon by providing a curriculum to support students of all educational focuses throughout their hackathon journey.”
Education Ventures at the Pava Center
Each year, the Pava Center collaborates with students from the School of Education by leading large workshops for incoming cohorts, advising entrepreneurial-minded students in the program, and encouraging their ventures to join the Pava Center accelerators.
“It’s a privilege to support some of the best minds looking to make a difference and back cutting-edge innovation for the future of education,” said Josh Ambrose, Director of the Pava Center. “Whether it’s a student preparing for a career in K-12, someone looking to launch online tutoring services around the world, or someone making a career pivot to build the tools they wish they had in the classroom, we are proud to come alongside to encourage and connect their initiatives, to the best of our ability.”
Interested in learning more about previous education sector ventures from the Pava Center? Check out these companies and their founders:
- Quest2Learn (Chinat Yu), an augmented learning platform for science labs
- WellCheq (Jodi Miller), a daily check-in tool for student emotional well-being
- ClassBank (Abby Coyle & Katie Gracey), a financial learning platform for students