Hi, I’m Robbie! I started and ran an ed-tech company for ten years.

Does your company want to build something new? I can do it.

 

After graduating from the University of Texas with a semi-useless humanities degree, I joined Teach for America and moved to Baltimore, Maryland to teach middle school history. Over the next 3 years, I fell in love with teaching, which was by far the hardest thing I have ever done.

While I was teaching, I discovered that planning lessons is one of the most time-consuming parts of the job, mostly due to tedious busy work. So, in 2012, another teacher and I set out to build the lesson planning app of our dreams. We wanted to help teachers ignore that busy work and focus on what actually matters: designing exceptional lessons for their students.

We did that. For the past ten years I’ve served as co-founder of Common Curriculum. At first, I started as the non-technical member of the team, raising money and closing sales. But over the last decade I learned to code and design, have had a hand in basically every feature of our app, and have personally built a few of them myself. I also helped refine our data-driven product development and feedback cycle, and have learned first-hand the value of listening deeply to your customers. Finally, I ran our entire sales funnel while doing all that, and grew the company to profitability on a shoestring marketing budget.

As much as I love Common Curriculum, I know in my heart that it’s time for me to work on something new.

So, now I’m looking to bring a decade’s worth of experience in design, development, and leadership to building software that helps people simplify complex problems and do what they love most.

In my free time I’m an inveterate nerd, playing in and running multiple Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. I also love Magic: The Gathering, reading long biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, and long-distance running.

Pie is better than cake. The last 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica never happened. I only made it to Season 2 of Game of Thrones, because the books were better. Fight me.

 

Co-Founder, Designer, Developer, Sales, & Marketing

Common Curriculum

2012 – 2022

 

Middle School Teacher

Baltimore City Schools

2009 – 2012

 

B.A., Government, Spanish, & Philosophy

University of Texas at Austin

2005 – 2009

Some Things I’ve Worked On

When you run a company for a decade, you find yourself contributing to most projects, so instead of walking you through every part of Common Curriculum, here are a few things I took the lead on that I really like. These represent just a sampling of my professional skills. From product design to development to video editing and copy writing: I’ve done it all.

School Page and Group Onboarding Flow

Principals wanted to buy Common Curriculum subscriptions for their teachers so their whole school can collaborate. I built the page and the accompanying onboarding flow that lets them do that.

Google Classroom Integration

Teachers wanted to write their Google Classroom assignments in the same place as their lesson plans. I conducted user research and designed that feature.

Common Curriculum Pro Upgrade Videos

When a teacher is thinking of upgrading to Cc Pro, they need to know why the features they’re paying for are valuable. I shot a series of silent shorts to communicate that information quickly.

I’d love to help your company design and build its next great thing.