Meet the people
behind Primer
We’re parents, educators, engineers, designers, and storytellers who have come together to build a new kind of education system.
Leadership
Ryan was homeschooled from Kindergarten through 8th Grade, and started Primer to help homeschool his own kids. He's spent the last decade building tech companies at Square, Gumroad, and Omni.
Ryan Delk
While David comes from a family of educators, he is a self-proclaimed “start-up guy”. Earning his operational chops as an early team member at Uber, he has spent his career leading teams at startups across a variety of industries.
David Cavise
Lindsay has 20 years of experience in education and school leadership. Before Primer, she was the Chief Academic Officer of Coney Island Prep. Prior Lindsay was the Senior Managing Director of Institute for Teach for America in the New York/Philadelphia region, overseeing the training for 600 new teachers, and she served as a TFA corps member in Newark Public Schools.
Lindsay Freeman
Bojan has been writing (and occasionally fixing) bugs since 2013. He studied computer science at MIT and worked at Coinbase before joining Primer. As a kid Bojan fell in love with learning through the Math Olympiad programs in Macedonia.
Bojan Joveski
Janet has a background in finance and leading go-to-market strategy & ops, and expansion. Her most recent role was at WeWork and has experience in real estate and B2C companies.
Janet Yen
Arrel first started working to improve access to quality education as cofounder of Wonderschool, helping preschool teachers start early childhood education programs out of their homes. Now that his kids (aged 5 and 9) are older, he’s ridiculously excited to help improve access to world-class K-8 education as the Head of Product at Primer.
Arrel Gray
Known as “coach” at Primer because of his enthusiasm for coaching his daughter and sons in Little League baseball, Garrett literally and figuratively wears many hats. Before Primer, Garrett was a Product Designer and Biomedical Engineer, designing neonatal medical devices for under-resourced hospitals. From there, he co-founded and was CEO of a Y-Combinator backed startup, Standard Cyborg, building developer tools for Computer Vision Machine Learning applications. Garrett brings a multi-disciplinary perspective and versatility to his role removing obstacles and building structures in order to unlock Primer’s growth.
Garrett Spiegel
Campus Leaders
Monique Bridges has 7 years of experience teaching at the elementary level. She has been the leader of her 3rd grade team and is also a recipient of the New Teacher Award and Bright Spot Award.
Monique Bridges
Julieta is a TFA alumni with 3 years of experience as a lead 4th grade ESOL teacher and after-school program co-founder and manager. She enjoys picking up new hobbies which now include soccer, traveling, ceramics, and creatively “cooking” frozen Trader Joe’s food items.
Julieta Rakover
Rebecca has 10 years of experience in education serving as a classroom teacher, interventionist, and curriculum specialist in both New York and Miami. She enjoys exercising, going to concerts, and Bravo TV.
Rebecca Weinberg
Vanessa has 7 years of experience teaching middle school in NYC and Miami. She has been a Special Education coordinator and spent 4 years as Grade level leader. She is a proud mom of a boy. She loves playing sports with passions for soccer, travel, reading and listening to the Crime Junkie podcast.
Vanessa Velazquez
Jennifer has 6 years of experience teaching elementary in Indianapolis and Jacksonville. She is a former founding charter school teacher. She enjoys hiking, working out, and traveling.
Jennifer Madrid
Lourdes has 20 years of experience teaching elementary students in Miami. She is the winner of her school’s Teacher of the Year award in 2020. She spent the last 4 years as a leader in curriculum and instruction, supporting teachers improve their academic impact in the classroom and improving school data.
Lourdes Echazabal
Julia has 5+ years of experience as a homeschool teacher with a degree in psychology and educational studies. She built an after school program in the Netherlands during the pandemic. She is a proud mother of three children and enjoys travel, blues music, gardening and practicing martial arts.
Julia Piedmont
Lauren has 8 years of experience teaching first and second grade in San Jose and Phoenix. She is a former team lead and curriculum director for a STEAM Summer School program working with grades K-5. She got married in 2022 and has a cat named Liam. She loves baking, yoga, Peloton workouts and reading.
Lauren Oritz
Join the team
The next generation deserves a better education system. If we’re going to get this right, we need more bright, ambitious, hard-working, creative people working on it.
Primer Careers
