Austen Allred is the co-founder and CEO of Lambda School. A native of Springville, Utah, Austen’s start-up journey began in 2017 with him living in his two-door Civic while participating in Y Combinator, a San Francisco-based seed accelerator. This experience became the foundation of Lambda School’s rapid growth. 

Before founding Lambda School, Austen was the co-founder of media platform GrassWire. He co-authored the growth hacking textbook Secret Sauce, which became a best-seller and provided him the personal seed money to build Lambda.

Austen’s disruptive ideas on the future of education, the labor market disconnect, and the opportunity of providing opportunity at-scale have been featured in: The Harvard Business Review, The Economist, WIRED, Fast Company, TechCrunch, The New York Times, among others. Austen is fluent in Russian and currently lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids. You can find him on Twitter @Austen.

As Lambda School’s Chief People Officer, Mark is responsible for building the People Team and establishing the culture, process, and resources of a rapidly growing remote organization. An expert in optimizing distributed teams, Mark is especially focused on building an efficient, global team that can scale successfully.

Mark joins Lambda School with 20+ years of experience as a startup executive and advisor on company culture and remote work. Mark is the former CEO of a leadership development consultancy, and holds a PhD in education from The University of British Columbia. He lives in Austin, Texas with his family. You can follow Mark on Medium @markfrein70.

As Lambda School’s Chief Operating Officer, Molly is focused on building and running the day-to-day operations that support Lambda School and help it scale. Molly joined Lambda School with years of operational experience at start-ups big and small. Most recently, Molly was the Vice President of Operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropy founded by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Prior to joining CZI, Molly was the Chief Operating Officer at Quip, a start-up that created a modern productivity suite, which sold to Salesforce in August 2016. She previously spent almost five years at Facebook where she helped develop and lead Facebook's long-term mobile strategy, and create the company's “hacker brand”. Earlier in her career, Molly worked at Google, the Council on Foreign Relations, and was an instructor at the NOLS Patagonia and NOLS Alaska.

Caleb Hicks is the President of Lambda School and one of Lambda’s earliest team members. He has led the design and implementation of Lambda School’s mastery-based learning model, and has directed and implemented nearly 100 curriculum iterations to respond to the rapidly changing tech industry.  

Previously, Caleb was the Senior Manager of Instructional Design at Apple where he was recruited to create the curriculum for the “Everyone Can Code” program for use in high schools, universities, enterprise training, and Apple Retail around the world. Caleb was also previously the Curriculum Director, Lead Instructor, and iOS Program Director at DevMountain.

Caleb holds a Bachelor of Arts in business and marketing education from Weber State University. He lives in Utah with his wife and four kids. You can find him on Twitter @calebhicks.

As Business Operations Lead, Bernier works cross-functionally across all business units to define key metrics and set Lambda’s strategic goals. As part of this work, he helps conduct analysis to improve operational efficiency and give better visibility on the health of the business to the Executive team. Bernier also leads external reporting efforts for Lambda including Outcomes and Diversity reporting.

Bernier joins Lambda with a strategy and finance background in both the private and non-profit spaces. Most recently, he was a Manager at Bain & Company in the San Francisco office focused primary on technology strategy. Previously, he spent time working in financial services and in the non-profit space at a philanthropy venture focused on charter school development.

Bernier earned his MBA from Yale School of Management and his BS from New York University. He lives with his fiancé in Oakland, CA. You can find him on Twitter or LinkedIn @Blauredan.

As Lambda School’s Head of Product, Maureen is focused on creating effective learning experiences through the tools that our students use. Maureen brings human-centered design practices to Lambda to ensure that the customer voice is the primary driver of what we are building.

Previously, Maureen held engineering and product leadership roles at Pluralsight focusing on the triggers that create engaging technology learning experiences. She also started the Salt Lake City chapter of Women Who Code to foster diverse, supportive communities of technologists.

Maureen has a Bachelor of Arts in environmental science from Colorado College and an MBA from the University of Utah. She lives in Utah with her husband, Andrew and her goldendoodle, Huckleberry. You can find her on Twitter @maureencodes.

As Lambda School’s VP of Outcomes, Zoran is focused on building the tools, the job search support, and the partnerships to help our students get hired. 

Zoran joins Lambda School with many years of experience across product, partnerships, business development, and operations.  Most recently, Zoran was at Uber for over 5 years, where he worked in business development and vehicle partnerships. Prior to Uber, Zoran spent 4 years at Facebook working on the Facebook platform and advertising APIs.  
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Zoran lives in San Francisco with his family.  You can reach him at zoran@lambdaschool.com.

As Lambda School’s VP of Learning, Mari is focused on delivering an unmatched learning experience that yields the best possible outcomes for Lambda learners and our hiring partners, regardless of industry. By designing the learner journey from the day someone decides to transform their career to when they’re on the job and are looking to brush up on new technology trends and tools, Mari is reinventing the way adults learn new skills.

 Mari joins Lambda School after many years in EdTech. Most recently, Mari led curriculum, instruction, and assessment teams at DataCamp. Prior to that, she spent over a decade leading learning departments and initiatives at Voxy, EF, and Rosetta Stone. She is a lifelong learner and educator and believes the true magic of learning happens at the intersection of technology and human-led instruction.

Mari has a Bachelor of Arts in Classics, with a minor in Spanish from Barnard College and an MA in Spanish Linguistics from Middlebury. An NYC transplant, she currently resides in sunny Miami with her husband and son.

VP of Finance Matthew Sullivan an experienced finance, strategy, and operations leader, focused on building the financial architecture for Lambda School to scale. 

Prior to joining Lambda School, Matthew was a VP at Goldman Sachs where he led finance for their co-brand credit card partnership with Apple. He helped lead Goldman Sachs’ acquisition of Final, a Y Combinator credit card technology start-up where he was previously the VP of Finance. Matthew also spent 9 years KKR where he led the valuation team for their Credit division. 

A board member of AnewAmerica Community Corporation, Matthew works to provide training and technical assistance to high need communities in the Bay Area. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in accounting and business administration from the University of St Thomas.

He lives in Oakland with his wife Josie and dog Ralphie. You can find Matthew on Twitter @matt_c_sullivan.

As Lambda School’s VP of Engineering, Jerry focuses on building the engineering teams and technology platforms servicing all of Lambda’s students and staff throughout their shared educational journey. He joins Lambda School with over 20 years of industry experience, most recently at an edtech nonprofit, and before that at a lifestyle media company. Earlier in his career, he was an engineer at companies ranging from tiny startups to Google and Goldman Sachs.

Jerry lives in New York City and has been on Twitter since 2006, but has never tweeted.

As Lambda School’s Chief Business Officer, Matt is focused on driving partnerships with leading employers, software ecosystems, and public and private organizations to support student outcomes, hiring partner success, and learning effectiveness.

Matt joins Lambda School after many years of business development, platform, and product experience. Most recently, Matt led the Product Partnerships team at Uber. Prior to that he spent 6 years at Facebook as the Head of Product Management for Facebook Games and the Director of Business Development. He is the founder of Graph Ventures.

Matt has a Bachelor of Arts in economics, with a minor in computer science from McGill University and an MBA from Stanford. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Kathryn. You can find him on Twitter @mattwyndowe.

As Lambda School’s General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Cecilia Ziniti oversees legal, regulatory, compliance, and transactional matters, and helps Lambda School continue to build trust and serve students. Cecilia also regularly participates in education and outreach related to the legal and regulatory status of income share agreements, paving the way for Lambda School to continue to offer a ground-breaking path to income mobility.   

She joins Lambda School after more than a decade of establishing trust in emerging technology brands. She was the first full-time lawyer on Amazon’s Alexa and Echo products, and saw the product from alpha through hypergrowth. Most recently, she led product, legal, and regulatory efforts at the self-driving car technology company, Cruise. Cecilia brings years of expertise in building consumer and partner trust to advance some of the most transformative businesses and technologies of our time at-scale.
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Cecilia holds a BS from Georgetown University, a JD from the University of California-Berkeley, and studied in London. She is passionate about technology and is an Investing member of Portfolio’s FemTech Fund. She lives in California, with her husband and three kids. You can find her on Twitter @CeciliaZin.