EP #127 How The Knowledge Exchange Makes Learning Accessible For Every Student

What if tutoring felt less like a transaction and more like a village? We sit down with Maija - Liisa Penn, CEO and co-founder of The Knowledge Exchange, to explore how a small Fredericksburg nonprofit delivers big impact through free, holistic, and evidence-based learning support. From K–12 students with IEPs or 504s to adults preparing for the GED or college classes, their model removes cost barriers while building a true partnership among tutors, families, and schools.

Maija shares her journey from special education and applied behavior analysis into community-driven leadership, and why her own experience as an undiagnosed learner fuels the mission. We talk about what typical tutoring misses—rigid curricula, weak home follow-through, and stigma—and how TKE flips the script by making parents active collaborators. Assignments continue between sessions, caregivers know what to reinforce, and teachers gain allies who understand accommodations and goals. The result is a continuum of support that turns short-term gains into lasting skills.

You’ll also hear how Dungeons & Dragons became an unexpected engine for growth. In their role-playing programs, learners practice planning, collaboration, problem-solving, and flexible thinking while having fun. The numbers tell the story: strong retention across youth and adult sessions, thriving summer programs that blend academics with gameplay, and students returning year after year. Beyond the table, TKE builds community capacity—contracting tutors, training enrichment leaders, and welcoming interns who want real-world experience in grants, outreach, or administration.

If you’re in the Fredericksburg area and want to get involved, there are many paths: apply for services, become a tutor or DM, volunteer behind the scenes, or make a tax-deductible donation to expand access. Subscribe, share this episode with a neighbor who cares about education equity, and leave a quick review to help more families find these resources.

Maija - Liisa Penn

The Knowledge Exchange

tkenonprofit.org

support@tkenonprofit.org

+1 540-412-8431

Transcript

Speaker 0:01

This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart.

What The Knowledge Exchange Does

Speaker 2 0:13

Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I have a special guest joining me today. We've got Maija - Liisa Penn, and she is with The Knowledge Exchange. Maija - Liisa, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Well, I am really excited to learn more about you and learn more about the Knowledge Exchange. So let's start there. Share with us what is the Knowledge Exchange.

Speaker 1 0:44

Well, the Knowledge Exchange is a 501c3 nonprofit founded back in 2020, right when COVID happened. Started on the premise of providing free and accessible tutoring for the community and then evolved from there. I'm currently the CEO and co-founder of the organization, and I'm pro boner through the organization as well. We exist to deliver holistic and evidence-based educational services that empower individuals and promote lifelong learning, fostering an inclusive global community. For us, we don't just see education as academic, we see education as a holistic, all-person type of approach. So we have some different innovative ways that we educate people just to be able to reach any learner that needs it. So yeah.

Speaker 2 1:30

Amazing. Well, I absolutely love what you're doing, and I'm a former teacher. So I it's this this is a holds a special place in my heart, what you're doing. So thank you what you're for what you're doing. I'd love to dive deeper though. You started around COVID. Tell me a little bit about your story and what led you to wanting to create this.

Maya’s Path And Why Access Matters

Speaker 1 1:53

Yeah, um, so I worked in special education back in 2024 until like 2017. I was a paraeducator in Spotsy and Stafford County public schools, considering to be a teacher of some sort, because I came from a family of teachers and educators. And I just saw that there was this gap. And I worked in like alternative placement for kids with autism and disabilities. So I've always always gravitated towards those populations because I was a student that was undiagnosed and needed extra support, but never got it until it was like, oh, I'm in high school and I'm about to graduate. My parents were like, Oh, you need SAT support with your math because your scores are not, you're not gonna, you don't have the scores. And my parents had to take out a loan for my tutoring. And I was like, I think that's ridiculous, but I was like, I'll do it because I have to. And so fast forward to when I'm adult, I'm like, how can I help support in some way? Um, my background's in applied behavior analysis as well. That's my undergrad in psychology. And I really wanted to figure out how I can support the family as well as support education. Um, and I wanted to find a different way to go about it just because I felt like, you know, teachers can only do so much, as you know, as being a teacher. You know, tutoring services are, you know, for the most part, are pretty rigid, and this is like a curriculum that we follow, and blah, blah, blah. Um, and so I was really interested in how we could make something different to help people. Um, I currently just work in nonprofit work full-time because that's just my passion. Um, but it just really came together from my background instead and just having a different perspective on education. The um founder and the prior CEO, um Jimmy Shing, he was a private tutor and he just saw that people paying for tutoring, they're paying $50, $80, $100 an hour for tutoring, and people who need it can't afford it on a consistent basis. And so we just kind of came together and said, hey, we're gonna try this thing out and just see what happens. And five years later, here we are. Um, so you know, just kind of came from just people that are passionate about the community. I'm a French for local, um, and so it's just me trying to gift back to my community and just to help the people that maybe won't get the help because they don't fit into you know that perfect little box.

Speaker 2 4:21

Right. Well, what what a gift you are to our community. So thank you for what you're doing.

unknown 4:28

Thank you.

Who They Serve And How To Join

Speaker 2 4:28

I appreciate it. It's amazing. And so if someone is listening, tell me who who thinks, you know, maybe this is something that they might need. So if there are parents listening, um, who are maybe having some kids that are struggling, who is your uh who kind of walk me through the process and who you serve, and if parents want to contact you, what that process looks like.

Speaker 1 4:56

Um, so it's pretty simple. Um, I'm out in the community, I'm on social media, things like that. So we get a lot of people that are word of mouth social media people that reach out to us. Um, but really we serve anybody. We believe adults need support too. So we have provide adult education when we have tutors, tutors available for college courses or GED support. But our primary um demographic is K through 12 learners of all facets because of my background. I work with Gen Ed and SPED. So I'm able to bring on tutors that have that experience to work with really any student as long as they have the comfortability and want to get coaching if they need it. Um, and also the SPED students that have 504s, IEPs. Um, we really take anybody as long as the parents are willing to partner up with us. Um, we're really big about encouraging the parents to be involved in that process because for us, we want to solve that problem by empowering the families to know how to learn, how to teach their child and support them academically and partnering up with the schools to really work together as a village for our youth and then perpetuate that into adult learners, recognizing that adults need support too, and just kind of destigmatizing this idea that tutoring is for people who are struggling, or tutoring is just for certain groups of people, it's for anybody. Um, it's just happens that we work with a lot of people with disabilities because that's my background. Um, but I'm just happy that I'm able to provide my expertise in a different way and empower other individuals who want to educate that aren't traditional educators because we don't just hire teachers, we hire people who are just passionate about a subject matter. Either they use it in their day-to-day work or what have you. Um, so that's kind of how that comes together. But how people can find us, they can go to our website, um, tke nonprofit.org. They can fill out an application, I'll reach out to them, or they can reach out to us through our social media. The knowledge exchange is our name, and we have like a blue light bulb. That's our um logo. So it's easy to find us, just reach out and you know, we'll connect and see if it could work out.

Parent Partnership And Accountability

Speaker 2 7:03

Amazing. I love that you have taken this to another level where you're including the parents and educating the parents as well, and working with the schools. So you've really thought about more, it's it's more than just tutoring, right? It's it's including everybody else so that it's really what's best for the child. I really love that you've taken that approach.

Dungeons & Dragons For SEL Growth

How To Volunteer Or Support

Speaker 1 7:26

Yeah, I noticed that was the gap that I saw when I worked in the schools, when I would talk with other tutors who would do it privately, that the parents didn't have buy-in. And for me, I emphasize that in that interview, that initial conversation of like, you got to be involved and we hold them accountable to that. Like if a tutor provides an assignment, we hold the parent accountable that we assign this to your kid to help them retain the information between sessions. And you got to help them with that so you can understand what we're doing and can reinforce that. Um, if that doesn't happen, we we have a conversation saying, Hey, you we want you to be invested, don't just drop your kid off with us because at the end of the day, we're not gonna be around here forever. And that's not the goal is for us to support and empower so we can move on to other avenues of education that need support. Um, so that's like a big part. Um, another facet of our organization is we provide enrichment services. And after COVID, around 2021, 2022, when all the corporate um um tutoring services kind of got their stuff together, and we were kind of figuring out okay, do we want to continue tutoring? Do we want to try some other things? And seeing this gap of social emotional learning um with our students and also with just people in general. Um, COVID really put a lot of us at a deficit. A lot of our kids are COVID babies that don't know how to socialize, don't know how to interact, don't know how to problem solve. The list goes on, as you know. And we are we are an organization of people that founded it that are big nerds um that love nerdy things. And so we had had a couple different things that was floating around about trying Dungeons and Dragons as a tabletop role-playing um platform that people use to kind of tell stories and create characters and fantasy. And I saw that as an opportunity to really teach these executive functioning skills, problem solving, supporting each other in a very different way, you know, math a little bit with like adding together roles and different things like that. And it's really evolved that that program started with two young, two young men back in 2021. It was just like a small little project, little pilot after the summertime that we tried out, like a couple like one-shot type of things, and now it's like blossomed into this one of our most successful programs because the need is there that people want social emotional learning. They just don't know what that looks like for their kid. And a lot of our students or a lot of our players are neurodivergent, so it helps support that social deficit that they have. Um, and so those same two young boys who started with us in 2021 are starting are still with us to this day, um, graduating high school and seeing a lot of our kids coming back year after year. We have about an 80% retention rate in that program. We do youth and adult um sessions, and we started doing a summer program that kind of melds together the academics with the DD to really provide that more, you know, fun bridge approach to really help kids enjoy learning. Um, it's been very successful. Um, so yes, the tutoring is a big facet of what we do, but the D is another fun, different way that we teach and has really been very successful for a lot of our um participants.

Speaker 2 10:51

I love that. What a creative way to connect with the kids and take it, you know, to another level and add some fun to it. I love that you did that. That's awesome. Yeah. I love that. So if if there are people listening that want to get involved, that want to help your mission, what are some ways that people can support the knowledge exchange?

Speaker 1 11:14

Of course, we're a nonprofit, so volunteers are always helpful. Um we contract our tutors, um, so we do pay our tutors and eventually our instructors that do the DD to compensate them for their time. Um, and myself and our other admin staff or pro bono. But we are looking for people who want to develop their skills, either they want to be interns and they want to help with grant writing, community outreach, they want to get some admin assistant experience, kind of some clear clerical work, because that would be very helpful, you know. Um, if somebody has finance background and want to support with like bookkeeping, things like that, any little bit helps because we're a small but mighty army of people that are really trying to make a difference. Um, so the easiest way is just to go on our website, join TKE, fill an application that kind of lists what our needs are. If somebody has a specific interest but they don't see exactly what they're looking for, still fill out application. We can have a conversation and see if there's a way that they can fit in. Um, so people can be tutors, people can be enrichment instructors, which are the DMs that do the DD. Really anything is an option for people.

Speaker 2 12:25

Amazing, amazing. Well, I absolutely love what you're doing, and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast today and sharing the knowledge exchange with us.

Donations, Tax Benefits, And Closing

Speaker 1 12:37

Yeah, of course, of course. And I realize obviously monetary donations and in-kind donations are always helpful. You know, we're a 51c3, so you do get that as a deduction on your taxes, so it doesn't hurt. But thank you for the time and the opportunity to share. Thank you.

Speaker 12:55

Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to FXBG NeighborsPodcast.com.