Before Dan Carroll was the co-founder of an edtech startup that currently serves K-12 schools nationwide, he was a corps member trying to find a way to make technology more accessible for his students. After his undergraduate days at Harvard, Dan deferred a consulting job to join Teach For America, where his experience as a teacher led him to a career in educational technology. The result was Clever, which gives students one-click access to personalized resources and makes using classroom applications more efficient for teachers.
Q & A
What led you to apply to Teach For America?
In college, I started the pre-med track. But I really enjoyed being an after-school tutor so much that once I learned about TFA, I realized I really wanted to spend time in the classroom. At the time, I had completed an internship at the Boston Consulting Group and was offered a job to come back full-time. Ultimately, I was granted a deferral from BCG for two years so I could join the corps.
When you think about yourself before and after the corps, what changed?
I was placed at STRIVE Prep Middle School, and I discovered my new passion—using technology to help teachers teach and students learn. TFA changed my awareness of what it really meant to be in the classroom and to really see our education system at work.
How has being the corps prepared you as a leader?
As hard and challenging as it is to start a company, it was still so much easier co-founding a startup than being a first-year teacher. If you can teach a group of rowdy 8th graders, you can stand in front of any group or audience and present. The grit I developed at TFA made it easier to push through the hard times as a founder.
Do you feel like you received the support necessary to succeed as a corps member?
I never felt like I was alone. My placement school was full of friendly TFA alumni—including my principal—who were always there to help me out. I also built connections with my fellow Colorado corps members that evolved into an amazing support structure as we worked through challenges of teaching in Denver. We still stay in touch as we all work on closing the achievement gap in different ways.
Have you been able to utilize the TFA network after the corps? If so, how has it come into play?
At Clever, we’ve grown from three co-founders to a company of over 100 people and from four schools to over half the schools in the U.S.—and the TFA network has been instrumental in this growth. STRIVE was one of the earliest users of Clever. We currently have about 10 TFA alumni on staff, so we recruit from the network. Corps members have even been customers of Clever and partners in our work.