New COO prepares early education leader for next phase of growth
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 29, 2015 — Surpassing 70 million visitors in 2014, Education.com has named Burke Culligan its Chief Operating Officer (COO). Culligan previously served in senior product management roles for Adobe Systems Digital Documents group and Yahoo’s Global HomePage group. As Education.com’s COO, Culligan oversees product strategy, product execution, and overall end-to-end customer experiences for the leading early education and learning platform.
“Burke brings deep expertise in building and monetizing large platforms,” said Todd Schwartz, Co-CEO. “We are excited to have Burke grow our platform further, enabling millions of teachers, parents and teachers help their kids excel in school.”
Near-term, Culligan and his team are preparing Education.com for new teacher focused solutions that are expected to roll out this spring. Other priorities include simplifying Education.com’s core Plus (Worksheets) and Brainzy (Games) experiences, as well as developing a curated early-education shopping experience.
Before joining Education.com, Culligan served as VP Product Management for Adobe’s Digital Document franchise, where he led the transformation of the traditional desktop software group towards a cloud-based subscription business – in the process, growing cloud subscription revenues to a $100M+ annual run rate within the first two years. Prior to joining Adobe, Burke was VP Product Management of the Global HomePage group at Yahoo!, driving experiences for hundreds of millions of daily users across 50-plus countries. Burke’s early focus on creating great web experiences began at Excite@Home before moving on to Netscape/AOL and Intuit, among others.
“There’s so much potential to use technology to help craft and personalize a young child’s love for learning,” said Culligan. “I’m ecstatic about how we’re envisioning the application of modern web technologies to create an essential tool and community for parents and teachers and their wonderful journey in preparing our children for the future.”
Culligan is a new addition to an expanded, seasoned management team at Education.com. Earlier this year, Education.com appointed Todd Schwartz and Rich Yang as Co-CEOs and Graham McNicoll as CTO. More information regarding Education.com leadership team is available online.
“We’re committed to hiring, and have been successful attracting the very best talent to advance Education.com strategically and operationally, supporting our rapid growth and serving parents and teachers worldwide,” Schwartz said.