5 Founders Shaping the Future of Higher Education

In an era marked by rapid transformations in the educational landscape, the role of visionary leaders has never been more crucial. This elite group of tech founders highlights individuals who are not only navigating these changes but are also setting the pace for future innovations.

Tracy Gorham , ConexED

Tracy Gorham is the visionary CEO and Founder of ConexED, embarked on a mission to revolutionize student engagement and support in higher education. Her journey began with a deep understanding of the barriers students face in accessing vital services and support, particularly for those with disabilities or remote learners. Inspired by the need for a more inclusive and efficient system, Tracy developed ConexED, a unified student services platform designed to streamline scheduling, meetings, messaging, and reporting, all while ensuring compliance with ADA and FERPA standards.

ConexED's importance lies in its ability to remove roadblocks and connect students with the right staff members at the moment they need it. By automating administrative tasks, the platform allows staff to focus on student interactions, improving the overall educational experience. The platform's comprehensive analytics empower institutional leaders to make data-driven decisions, enhancing student retention and success rates. Tracy's commitment to innovation and student success has made ConexED an essential tool for over 13.2M students worldwide, facilitating millions of academic and support interactions annually.

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Sameer Maggon , SearchStax

Sameer Maggon is the founder of SearchStax, a company that empowers organizations to elevate their website search to deliver superior outcomes for their visitors. Sameer brings more than 15 years of experience in building software platforms, teams and products at the intersection of information retrieval, open-source and scalable systems. An early adopter of cloud technologies, Sameer is passionate about closely working with customers and utilizing technology to solve high-value problems.

That’s where the inception of SearchStax comes in; Sameer identified a market need for companies to improve their website search without having to build, scale and manage complex Solr infrastructures.

This rings especially true for higher education institutions, where SearchStax is laser-focused. Creating a search experience that fits the needs of prospective students, current students and empowering marketing teams to gain insights from their search data is a complex issue that Sameer and the SearchStax team are committed to solving.

Sameer’s vision extends to a proactive use of search, transforming it from a table stakes website tool, to an impactful lever that both technical and non-technical teams can use to curate search results and connect users with the content they need.

Vikram Chalana , Pictory

Vikram Chalana is an accomplished engineer turned serial entrepreneur. Currently, he is spearheading Pictory, an innovative software company that leverages cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to empower users to transform their messages into captivating video content quickly and effortlessly.

Before founding Pictory, Vikram co-founded Winshuttle, an enterprise software company specializing in SAP data management. Under his leadership, Winshuttle expanded globally to a team of over 300 people. During his tenure at Winshuttle, Vikram observed a significant trend: communication, whether for educational or marketing purposes, was increasingly gravitating towards video. However, he noticed that very few individuals within organizations had the tools to create or edit videos effectively. Additionally, he recognized the vast amounts of untapped content— such as written documents, slide decks, recorded webinars, and podcasts— that were failing to engage audiences. This realization inspired the creation of Pictory, aimed at enabling anyone to repurpose existing content into engaging videos.

Lance Hydrick and Dallin Palmer , Halda.AI

Halda’s journey into higher education didn’t start when the company was founded in 2021. Rather, it began in the heart and mind of founder, Lance Hydrick, a first-generation college student looking to transform his future through education.

Taking this step without generations of knowledge and connections was hard–harder than it should have been–and this experience informed his perspective when he teamed up with Co-Founder, Dallin Palmer. Dallin was also working in higher education, connecting students with future schools, scholarships, and other opportunities. Together they wanted to create something that would add value for the student and build healthy, sustainable institutions of higher education.

To deliver that value, they started where the majority of students start: The higher ed website.

They realized that higher education websites are built to serve many purposes, but those purposes rarely serve the prospective student. Lance had flashbacks to those early research experiences he had, where he had to jump through hoops and over hurdles just to envision a future for himself.

Today, Halda incorporates AI-driven efficiency and innovative integrations that provide a data-backed perspective to the higher ed student journey. And as these founders keep building, one thing will always remain: When the student wins, everyone else wins, too.