IFE Conference 2025 (Mexico): Breaking Barriers -- AI and Strategic Partnerships Shaping Education

The education sector is buzzing with AI, but are schools and EdTech businesses truly leveraging it for sustainable growth? In this live episode, we cut through the hype to explore how AI, combined with strategic partnerships, can drive real impact.

In this special live episode of Breaking the Grade, recorded LIVE from the IFE Conference in Monterrey, Mexico, I sat down with Jaime Pales, Co-Founder & President of Your Way Learning, and Michael Golden, Vice Dean of Innovative Programs & Partnerships at Penn GSE. These two educational innovators share their insights from the frontlines of EdTech and higher education. They reveal the critical mistakes businesses make when implementing AI without a solid partnership strategy, and what it actually takes to build impactful collaborations. We also dive into how AI and partnerships can solve real problems for education businesses, from attracting students to scaling operations.

This episode is for you if you're wondering how to navigate the AI landscape and forge partnerships that deliver results.

Tune In to Hear:

• The common pitfalls of AI adoption: Why simply implementing AI won't guarantee growth, and what crucial steps businesses often overlook.
• How strategic partnerships amplify AI's impact: The specific ways collaboration can solve challenges that AI alone can't address.
• The key elements of successful EdTech partnerships: What education leaders and founders must focus on to build collaborations that drive sustainable growth.
• Why a clear understanding of your business needs is crucial before investing in AI: How to avoid the trap of chasing trends without a solid strategy.
• The practical steps to attract more students and scale impact using AI and partnerships: Real-world examples and actionable advice for education businesses.
• What decision makers need to know to make AI adoption a success.

If you run an education business, this episode is a must-listen. 

#EdTech #AIinEducation #StrategicPartnerships #BreakingTheGrade #LeadGeneration

------

Josh Chernikoff LinkedIn

EdSales Elevation Experience

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Breaking the Grade (Live from IFE Conference)
• 2:46 Guest Introductions: Meet Jaime Pales & Michael Golden
• 3:44 The Penn GSE & Your Way Learning Partnership
• 4:55 AI in Education: Buzzword or Game-Changer?
• 6:03 The Potential of AI to Transform Learning
• 8:01 AI’s Explosive Growth: Faster Than Any Other EdTech Innovation
• 10:10 What Investors & Partners Look for in an EdTech Business
• 12:28 Why Research-Backed Solutions Win in EdTech
• 15:33 The Challenges of Scaling an Education Business
• 17:07 How Startups Can Avoid Common EdTech Pitfalls
• 19:26 What It Takes to Be a Successful Education Entrepreneur
• 22:55 Lessons from a Founder: 20+ Years in EdTech
• 25:40 Final Thoughts & How to Stay Connected

Transcript

Keywords
Speakers
Speaker 1 (100%)


Josh Chernikoff
0:01
Our students are the future. How we advance innovation and impact and approach equity in their classrooms will determine how we thrive as a world community. The status quo just won't cut it. That's why we're here to break the grade. Hello breakers and difference makers. I'm Josh Chernikoff, host of how I broke that. I'm a two time entrepreneur in the education space, and I've successfully exited both of those companies. I've experienced my fair share of breaks in my life, and I'm here to bring my signature approach to my new show, Breaking the grave. I'm embarking on this special journey alongside my good friend and mentor, John gamba, Director of innovative programs, and entrepreneur in residence at Penn GSE, in our podcast, you'll hear from emerging business owners in the education space who are working to transform education as we know it, tune in as we hear about industry trends, unique principles and practices and the attempts that have and haven't worked for our grade breaking guests. So fellow entrepreneurs and educators, what do you think are you ready to take a hammer to the education space and break the grade. Welcome to a special edition and live edition of breaking the grade. Today, we're diving deep into the intersection of Ed Tech AI and strategic partnerships, and we're doing it live from IFE in Monterey, Mexico. We've got a fascinating conversation with Jaime Palace from your way learning and Dr Michael golden from Penn GSE. They're sharing insights on their groundbreaking partnership, the realities of AI in education and what it truly takes to succeed as an ed tech entrepreneur. Get ready for a candid look at research practice and the relentless pursuit of impact. Let's break it down. Breakers. Welcome to a live episode of Breaking the grade. And we are actually doing some groundbreaking work here, because I don't think I've had two guests with one mic. And so for for the audience, by the way, we're passing a microphone back and forth between two distinguished gentlemen, Jaime and Michael golden. And so I'm going to let both you guys introduce yourselves. Welcome to the show. And then we're going to dig into ed tech partnerships. Ai, Mexico, IFE, all these wonderful things. So Jaime, kick us off. Yeah,
S
Speaker 1
2:46
hi. I'm Jaime paulez. I'm a co founder and president of the International Division at your way learning an AI in education company.
S
Speaker 2
2:56
Hi there. I'm Michael golden. I'm the Vice Dean of innovative programs and partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. I also serve as the head of catalyst at Penn GSE, our Global Center for Education innovation.

Josh Chernikoff
3:11
Great. We are all here gathered in Monterey, Mexico at the IFE conference, here on this wonderful campus that we all think is wonderful. We all can keep getting lost in but we found each other here. And the point of this conversation is to really talk about this partnership that you guys have have begun to strike up. So catch up the audience on where we are on the partnership between pen and your way, pen GSE and your way. And then we'll take it from there.
S
Speaker 2
3:44
Well, I'll kick it off. We're super excited that we have the paperwork in place and the development underway to build a program between your way and catalyst at Penn GSE to support educators in their orientation and adaptation of AI in their classrooms. We're excited because, as we know from the news and you see everywhere you go, AI is a new buzz word, and we want to make sure educators are prepared to understand what's being asked of them, what opportunities exist, where they have to be cautious, what concepts and and policies and governance they have to keep in mind and how they can be ready to not only support their classroom students, but also their own operational efficiencies. Yeah,

Josh Chernikoff
4:34
Michael said it, and I want you to respond to the word that he used, because we touched on this earlier, this idea that is, AI, a buzzword, and how do you feel about the proliferation of the word? And you're you're trying to deliver something, and people are just tossing this word around. Ai, yeah, AI
S
Speaker 1
4:55
is definitely a buzzword. Yeah, it's gonna be for. While in to a certain degree that even I'm just going to be very honest with you, when we started your way, we spelled it your way with AI at the end, is a y at the end, because we thought it was going to be attractive, because we knew it was going to become a buzzword. However, what, what I'm really concerned about is that we have the opportunity of redefining learning with the help of AI, if we really approach this technology with intention, with research, with really also experience of what how did we approach ed tech in the past? What were the pitfalls of ed tech integration in the past? And we don't want to repeat those mistakes, so we want to turn AI from a buzz word to something that is taken seriously, that is taken with intention and coherence in Transforming Learning. You have

Josh Chernikoff
6:03
been in ed tech for let's just say a while. Have you ever seen anything like this in terms of AI and its entrance into ed tech?
S
Speaker 1
6:15
I've never been seen any technology that has the potential that AI has, like Bill Gates said a few months ago, AI is the technology that human beings have built that has no limits. It's limitless. So when I see what I when we had tech in the past, and there was machine learning and there were adaptive software. They were really specific and needed to be specialized in tech was used to basically replace things that were more traditional, if you see the integration of technology in education in most countries in the world, in most classrooms, they didn't get to a point of redefining learning because it was hard. It was another thing that teachers needed to do, and teachers don't have time, right? And it needed a lot of professional development. AI is a little bit different that AI is very easy to use, and then it does things for personalized learning, for example, that would never be possible before. So I'm very excited about AI and the potential.

Josh Chernikoff
7:38
Michael, I'm going to ask you really basically the same question, but, but from the seat that you sit in, and, I mean, you get to see so many fascinating ideas and people from the position that you're in, so same question. Have you ever seen anything like this in education with AI coming on,
S
Speaker 2
8:01
you know, Josh, I don't think we've ever seen a technology with the adoption rate that ai chatgpt, for example, in November 2022, and that hockey stick growth. I don't think we've ever seen that in any technology, in any field, let alone in education. Certainly, we're very interested in this notion of how and what can be different, and at the same time, very conscious of the fact that technology, AI in particular, is a tool, and it shouldn't ever be the goal, but rather something that we leverage and deploy in order of some greater goal, which we would say and as Tommy said, very much about personalizing learning, creating competency based pathways, giving tools and and and supports to teachers in new ways that they never had the chance to do a very, very quick learning curve of coming down and being able to adopt it with your way very clear pedagogical approaches that can support them in building their own assets and lesson plans and solutions and building those into proven research based approaches for efficacy and change in impact for teaching and learning. So we're excited about all those things, and we're also cautious, because we're figuring out how to build and know the right amount of professional learning required. In fact, I was just in a meeting here at Tech Monterey talking with folks who wondered whether every single classroom teacher now has to be large language model, computational science scholar in order to run their classrooms. And we know that's not the case, but we still have to decide how much do they need to know and how much do we leave to the learning scientists and the. Engineers, and how much do we have to put in the hands of teachers or their school leaders, or ultimately, and hopefully, in the hands of students in a student centered way? Let's

Josh Chernikoff
10:10
take a step back from from the AI conversation. I just want to for our audience out there, who mainly are founders and entrepreneurs and CEOs in the education space, and who know a lot about, you know, the milk and pen GSE competition and and I think they would be really interested to understand what you saw in your way, what you look for in a partnership with a company like your way. What? What did they prove to you in the short term, long term, you know, to be able to get to this place
S
Speaker 2
10:47
from the start in our conversations with your way, it was very clear that they started with a basis of research and clear research opportunities and research questions that they wanted to address, and that everything was built from what they learned from their experiences with practitioners, and the ability to base that on foundational and fundamental research, as well as evaluating its effectiveness in the classroom. So we're very conscious with all of our entrepreneurs, and as you said in the 16th year of the milk and Penn GSE business plan competition that's going on now get your application in by February 19, is that we're seeing amazing solutions that are coming up, but sometimes they're not based on research, and sometimes they don't have the opportunity or the experience to know they have to pilot in some way, even if it's a minimum viable product, in classrooms or in the administrative office or on the busses or in homes, wherever their solution is going to be based. So we saw, in your way, an organization that had that same mindset that we do about research to practice, and had that same goal of making an impact and tracking that impact, and ultimately, had that same goal to recognize that adaptation is what's most successful for any of these innovations. The road to education reform is littered by ed tech startups, and that's because they didn't understand technology and education and business models all have to converge into a really successful venture.

Josh Chernikoff
12:28
And you understand that and and I think it's probably an amazing position for your for you to be in, to have to blend all of these elements that you talk about. So I want to, I want to, I want to turn the mic back over to Jaime, and I want to ask you this. I don't know about you, but when I started my first business in 2008 and my second one in 2011 2012 The last thing I wanted to do was do any research to practice, because I had to get going, I had to make money, I had to get traction. So kudos to you for recognizing that research to practice has it, has it. What are the downsides to that that you experienced?
S
Speaker 1
13:15
Yeah, in I don't want to seem like as a co founder, that I had a crystal ball. I didn't have a crystal ball. We started our first company back in 2004 and it wasn't a research to practice company, okay? And part of the company was direct to student tutoring, and another part it was professional development for teachers, and we created this professional development model, and we deployed it, and we had great reviews from teachers everywhere. But then when we went a few months later to classrooms to see the impact, it wasn't there. So we were saying, well, we delivered an amazing workshop. Everyone loved it. What's going on? Why this hasn't translated to different or better practice? And it was because there were many elements that it would take us an hour to talk about, because there's a lot of research behind it around, why we weren't developing pedagogical problem solvers, why we weren't impacting action research in teachers that mindset. And then we said, we have to sit down and really rethink what we're doing in order to have impact. And that's when we started working with uh, with a few universities starting, including Stanford University, around adult learning science, yeah. And so it wasn't that we landed there. Okay, at the beginning we realized that we weren't having impact, and our credibility was going to go down if we didn't, and that happened over. 15 years ago.

Josh Chernikoff
15:00
Some music to my ears there, in terms of, you know, learning as an entrepreneur, building credibility as an entrepreneur. You and I, I'm a huge fan of Penn and the Graduate School of Education and Milken, obviously. So are you. You can hear you're drinking the Kool Aid. So talk to the audience about, you know, when you finally got your first dose of the Kool Aid and recognized the value of research to practice, how it changed the business and how you looked at how to grow the business? Well,
S
Speaker 1
15:33
one thing that really was very important for us is that if you really want to make a lot of money. You don't get into education. There's other industries that you can make more money, faster, easier and with less headaches. In education, in order to change the game, it's like to a certain degree. I say that sometimes I try to push a wall, a concrete wall, and it's not the easiest industry to become an entrepreneur. If you if you get into education, you become an ed tech entrepreneur, and you want to do things right is that there's some sort of mission. There's something in your character that leads you there. So for us, making money was not good enough. So this is why, for us, was very natural to really lean into research, because we wanted to make sure that when we were facing our clients, we're facing clients and saying we're doing something for you that really is going to have an impact, not something that just I'm gonna open your wallet and make money out of so for us, it was easier. And also I then going back to Ed Tech. We didn't want to be just another ed tech company that added another tool for schools. We wanted to do something that was really transformative. So that's the reason why for us, was very easy to add to go the research route

Josh Chernikoff
17:07
you want to add to that? Yeah,
S
Speaker 2
17:08
yeah. And that's why, after 14 years of the milk and Penn GSC business plan competition, we launched catapult, our virtual accelerator, because we knew that most entrepreneurs start in the education business because they are interested in making money and doing good, having an impact and making a difference, but we recognize they are all savvy and all the things it takes to develop a venture to be successful, and That's why catapult is organized around four lanes of acceleration. You have to focus on leadership. You have to focus on the market and product and finance, and all of those journeys have way points and milestones that you have to accomplish, that you have to build competency in, and you have to build capacity around in order to be able to be successful, understanding how to sell into the marketplace, knowing what type of venture, legal organization you want, where is your funding come coming from, what's your value proposition or business model, what's your minimum viable product? To test that key element of your mission. And if we don't get all those things in a venture, then they do end up not succeeding as well as they might. So that's why we partnered and connected catapult and the milk and pen GSE business plan competition. And I think we're finding with partners like your way they're informing that journey and building a community of others who are on that journey together, but also informing our work, informing, as you asked before, of the hundreds and hundreds of applications we get for that competition, of the 1000s of Ventures we see around the globe every year, and of all the, you know, multiples of businesses or practitioners or universities or other schools we could partner with, or technology companies, etc, we find that you have to have that same mindset, and that's that kindred spirit, but also the ability to work across all of those different lanes of acceleration to get your venture able To hit the market, succeed in the marketplace, and then grow to be scalable and sustainable. So

Josh Chernikoff
19:26
I believe you're the only doctor sitting at this table. So I'm going to ask you a question, like you
S
Speaker 2
19:31
have, if you have a bad neck, I can't be here. I don't you can answer this

Josh Chernikoff
19:35
one. I'm telling you what. What does Jaime have? Other than the support of Penn, you know, other than the mindset, what do the entrepreneurs in our audience have to have? What do you see, because you've seen so many entrepreneurs like, what do you have to have inside of you to be successful as an entrepreneur? More, because I believe, and I had it happen to me yesterday, I went from the penthouse to the outhouse in a matter of minutes, running my business. What do people have to have in their DNA to be successful? You see entrepreneurs all the time? Well,
S
Speaker 2
20:15
there are quite a few things. I'll give you the couple that come to mind. First one is you have to have persistence. You can't accept no as an answer, and you just have to understand why you're getting no as an answer, or why you're not getting not getting that meeting, or why somebody's not answering your call, or why and how you can make your product better. And there are 100 things that happen in a day that could derail you, but great entrepreneurs stick with it. Second, I think it's about being future focused, but focused at the same time on being strategic, a strategic doer, so being able to prioritize what's important in the short run and the long run, keeping that journey in mind, but making sure you're getting those milestones and waypoints along the way, making sure you're doing the hard work up front to be able to have a vision of where you can go and won't be derailed, but you will be able and willing to pivot if need be. I think it's also having a mindset that recognizes that none of us know it all alone, but the community can help. And seeing someone who's willing to admit that they don't know everything, and willing to take advice or bring new ideas or a different solution, if you start with yes and then you say, now we'll figure out how we can do yes, it's a much better way than starting with with no. And I would say the last thing is really recognizing that this is a long, hard road in trying to create institutional, appropriate systems that don't have the inequities and the persistent historical differential from one location to another, from one place where you were born to another, from being born with certain parents or another, or rural or urban or wealthy or poor, and recognizing that the opportunity to be thoughtful and quick witted and results oriented, but also to be a problem solver. Say, these are the ingredients I've been given in this context, how we're going to put them together in a really interesting recipe that everyone's going to enjoy. I

Josh Chernikoff
22:31
think, as a doctor, he's he did a great job there. But I want to ask you, Jaime, last question, why don't you evaluate yourself. You know, based on that answer, where do you what are your strengths? What are what are areas that you might be working on even today? And I think it's important for people in our audience to understand that we need to continually work on ourselves. So what are you doing?
S
Speaker 1
22:55
So I started being an entrepreneur when I was 30. I'm 53 now. Some are completely different entrepreneur now than I was when I was 30. That when I was 30, there was a lot of ego in the mix. The some aspirations of titles at some point were important, even the approach and seeing what I what entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur should be. Now, at 53 I always like to say that I like to leave the eagle at the door. Yeah, and for me, I really have become more reflective of my strengths and the areas in which I'm I need to continue growing and be open to bring to the table team members and collaborators that are better than I am. For example, a big step that we made this year was that we knew that we had. We were tackling the US and international and Jason green, the other co founder, and myself were three co founders and the president of the US operations. And I needed to focus on the US operations and international operations, and we needed to bring someone as a CEO to basically integrate, yeah, and take care of the things that we didn't have time to take care of, and bring expertise in growing a startup or a young company to become really a big company, maybe in my 30s, I would say, No, no, I'm going to be The CEO forever. Right now we were more humble and more reflective and more open to collaborate and to understand our we're good at and the things that we need to get help.

Josh Chernikoff
24:51
Listen, guys. I am not a doctor. I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm pretty good at listening. And and listening to you guys talk, there's a lot of really interesting ways that you guys will work together. And so I'm excited to see how this partnership goes. I'll be riding shotgun or sitting in the back, depending on who's driving the bus, because I think you got great people on this bus. And so I appreciate you guys taking the time and and only wish you guys the best, and we'll make sure our audience is is following the milk and pen GSE business plan competition. February 16, 19th, might as well be done on the 16th. Why wait till you're earlier the better and, and we'll follow your way. So thank you guys for joining.


25:40
Thank you so much, Josh. Cheers.

Josh Chernikoff
25:43
Hey breakers. Thanks for joining us on breaking the grade. If you want to get to know your fellow breakers in education better, please join us in our community, in mighty networks. You can also follow us on social media for lead generation tips, information about the community and the social media in the show description, and if you want to help us out, please like and subscribe to the show. Keep on breaking you lead gen legends. You.
Rate transcript quality

Done

03:40
26:19






1.5x

• 
  AI Chat
• 
  Outline
• Comments

Automated summary will be ready soon

• Navigate quickly to what's important
• Get a recap of what was talked about

All transcriptions completed