News Releases

SAN DIEGO, April 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- R. Brad Lane, CEO of RIDGE-LANE Limited Partners, and former Governor of North Carolina, Beverly Perdue, Managing Partner of the Education Practice at RIDGE-LANE LP, as well as other members of the RIDGE-LANE LP's Education Advisory Board, pack a big punch at this year's ASU+GSV Education Summit, April 17^th in San Diego, CA.  Started in 2010 with a collaboration between Arizona State University (ASU) and Global Silicon Valley (GSV), the annual ASU+GSV Summit is the industry catalyst for elevating dialogue and driving action around raising learning and career outcomes through scaled innovation and making sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in the future.

In this marquis education industry event, RIDGE-LANE LP executives and board members took the stage throughout the Summit with some of the biggest names in the space. Included among the RIDGE-LANE Education Advisory Board members participating in the Summit this year are John Fallon, CEO of Pearson Education - the world's largest education company, and John C. Mitchell, the Vice Provost of Stanford University, who were all featured together in a keynote discussion with R. Brad Lane and The Hon. Beverly Perdue, entitled "Public Sector, Private Sector & Academia - Collaborating for Improved Student Outcomes."

The keynote featured the following topics:

• If we want to accelerate change in the next 1000 days, what needs to happen?
• What are the barriers to deep meaningful progress?
• What are the levers to pull that will be accelerators?
• Considering the 2nd Machine Age and the unavoidable 4th Industrial Revolution, what needs to happen to accommodate the modern learner – what do they need, to be equipped for the rapidly changing economy and job market.
• How do the Public Sector, the Private Sector, and Academia – work together – to accomplish these grand challenges, with massive societal implications?
• And, the ever important, yet illusive answer to scale.

R. Brad Lane says "I'm reminded of William Gibson's quote 'The Future Is Already Here — It's Just Not Evenly Distributed'… which, in the context of Education, is relevant to Scale, Access and Equity… The assumption I'd like everyone to agree with me on, at least for the sake of this point, is that we already know so much about what is working properly (and what isn't)… so how do we "simply" take what we know, and scale it?"

The keynote ended with a provocative call-to-action by asking the entire industry to answer the question: "If everyone had to create a brand new institution that was a public-private partnership, including: private business, investment capital, philanthropy, academia, and government, what would it's mission be, what would you seek to accomplish, and structurally what would you create?"

Other members of the RIDGE-LANE Limited Partners team, who provided thought leadership through keynote speeches and panel discussions, include:

• Dr. Michael Crow, Senior Advisor to RIDGE-LANE LP, and President of Arizona State University where he is guiding the transformation of ASU into one of the nation's leading public metropolitan research universities, an institution that combines the highest levels of academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact – a model he terms the "New American University."
• The Hon. Ted Mitchell, Senior Advisor to RIDGE-LANE LP, and President of the American Council on Education (ACE), the nation's most influential, respected, and visible higher education association, and former U.S. Under Secretary of Education.
• Dr. Paul LeBlanc, Senior Advisor to RIDGE-LANE LP, and President of Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) where he has led the growth of the university from 2800 students to nearly 100,000 and into one of the largest non-profit providers of online higher education in the country, and the first to have a full competency-based degree program untethered to the credit hour or classes approved by a regional accreditor and the US Department of Education.
• Dr. Daniel Greenstein, Senior Advisor to RIDGE-LANE LP, most recently serving as Director, Post-Secondary Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and was previously Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Programs at the University of California System, where he oversaw academic planning at the university-wide level for 10-campus, 220,000-student system.

RIDGE-LANE Limited Partners is a social-impact merchant bank focused on Education, Information Technology, and Sustainability, with a team of General Partners, Operating Partners, and Senior Advisors who have served at the highest levels of business, finance, and government.  RIDGE-LANE LP structures public-private partnerships to finance social infrastructure and urban development projects across the U.S., and provides advisory services to venture capital funds and corporate development services to commercialize and scale private technology companies across the globe. With offices in New York City, Washington DC and Palo Alto, RIDGE-LANE LP is a triple-bottom-line business that creates social impact and economic value by bridging the gap between the public and private sector and serving as a strategic partner to innovative companies through each phase of their growth - from ideation, to design, strategy and execution - leveraging our knowledge and relationships - to ensure our portfolio companies success.

Innovators tackling grand societal challenges:  Contact.Us@Ridge-Lane.com

For more information on RIDGE-LANE LP and its Education Practice visit: www.RIDGE-LANE.com

SOURCE RIDGE-LANE Limited Partners