Nearpod, the Award Winning Company Transforming Instruction, Names EdTech Veteran Maurice Heiblum as President/COO

Nearpod, the interactive learning platform helping districts and schools transform instruction by providing innovative teaching tools and digital curriculums, today announces Maurice Heiblum as its new president and chief operating officer (COO). In the new role, he will help the company scale with its growing line of instructional technology and interactive learning content for K-12 classrooms. 

Heiblum comes to Nearpod as an executive with extensive experience growing companies. His background has allowed him to wear many hats as an entrepreneur, COO for a cybersecurity firm, and divisional president at Blackboard. Heiblum’s edtech career started when he helped launch Elluminate in 2001 and later sold it to Blackboard. The company was one of the first web conferencing and virtual classroom solutions in the e-learning space. 

After Elluminate was acquired by Blackboard in 2010, he transitioned to its executive team and led the Blackboard Collaborate division to significant growth and also led Blackboard’s go-to-market strategy for Blackboard’s higher education, corporate and government markets. After four years with the learning management system (LMS) leader, Heiblum transitioned into the cybersecurity industry and took a COO position with Beyondtrust, a CRN Security 100 company. 

“When the opportunity to interview with Nearpod came up, it was something I couldn’t pass up,” explained Heiblum. “The leadership team starting with Guido and all the way down has created something special which is obvious if you look at the passionate response its evoked from teachers. Teaching is one of the most important things anyone can do in this world and I’m pleased to be helping invigorate instruction.”

Heiblum will be in charge of helping grow Nearpod as it branches out to more classrooms and school districts. Nearpod has grown rapidly over the last year and is now used in three out of every five U.S. school districts. Heiblum’s goal is to develop a framework to efficiently harness that growth and continue to scale the company as classrooms across the country, and the world, provide more personalized education with one-to-one device strategies that give each student access to educational tools they can call their own.

“This is a huge hire for Nearpod and a great show of how we are scaling with our growth. Maurice is an experienced edtech executive with a proven background building up companies in the space,” added Guido Kovalskys, CEO and co-founder of Nearpod. “His instant enthusiasm for Nearpod made him a natural fit to help us develop in this new phase of our company’s evolution. We’re thrilled that he saw something in the company to bring him back to the industry he’s passionate about.” 

With a catalog of over 6000 standards-aligned lessons for K-12 topics from digital citizenship to algebra, the company provides robust learning opportunities for students around the country. This news comes off the heels of six new Nearpod partnerships spanning LMS integrations with Canvas and Schoology as well as the launch of hundreds of new lessons created in partnership with leading authorities like BBC Worldwide. Additionally, in 2017 Nearpod was recognized for the second year in a row as one of the fastest growing private companies by the Inc 5000. 

About Nearpod:
Nearpod is an award-winning education technology company that is empowering teachers to transform instruction reaching 3 in 5 school districts across the US. Through the combination of software that merges multimedia with real-time student feedback, ready-to-teach digital content designed in partnership with respected publishers like Common Sense Education, PhET and Readworks, and unparalleled educator support, Nearpod is a changing how teachers are approaching 1:1 computing in the classroom.

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