Jennifer Carolan
Board of Directors
Jennifer started her career as a classroom teacher in Chicago where she taught history for 7 years in traditional district schools. She moved to Silicon Valley in 2000 to attend Stanford University and was inspired by all of the entrepreneurs working on their ideas. She found a way to use her teaching experience to support these founders. She worked at NewSchools Venture Fund, an organization founded by John Doerr and Brook Byers, for 9 years and learned the craft of venture capital. She also co-created and taught the popular course Innovations In Teaching at Stanford University for 3 years.
This year, Jennifer is on the teaching team for Lean Launchpad ENGR 245 at Stanford. She co-founded her first fund NewSchools Seed Fund in 2011, her second, Reach Capital I in 2015, Reach II in 2018 and Reach III in 2020. Reach backs amazing and often unlikely entrepreneurs who are passionate about bringing cutting edge technology into education. The Reach portfolio of 100+ companies are creating new opportunities for people everywhere who might think of themselves as underdogs due to background or other challenges. Jennifer has sat on the boards of Nearpod, Ellevation Education, Desmos, Outschool, BetterLesson, and BookNook and is heavily involved in TeachFX, Derivata, and Sketchy.