Last week, Evan Marwell, our founder and CEO, was named the San Francisco Chronicle’s Visionary of the Year. The award honors Bay Area paradigm changers “who strive to make the world a better place by employing new, innovative business models and practices.” Evan was selected from a pool of 13 distinguished candidates for identifying the national problem of school broadband access and pursuing a solution with unwavering dedication.
Since our founding in 2012, we have been singularly focused on upgrading the Internet infrastructure in America’s K-12 classrooms so that all students can take advantage of the promise of digital learning.
Under Evan’s leadership, we played a crucial role in the effort to modernize E-rate, resulting in the FCC’s commitment to an additional $2.5 billion per year for school broadband and $5 billion to upgrade school Wi-Fi. We built widespread support for school upgrades among some of America’s most influential CEOs and bipartisan leaders, created resources to assist districts, and partnered with 30 state departments of education to grow awareness of the connectivity gap.
The Visionary of the Year award honors Evan and the rest of the EducationSuperHighway team, but our progress to-date would not be possible without the support of our partners and all of the state and district leaders we’ve worked with. There is still more to be done, but together, we will deliver high-speed broadband and the promise of digital learning to 40 million students across the country.
Congratulations, Evan!