"Look in those white spaces" - Dr. Todd Grindal of SRI

In this episode of Land and Lead, Dr. Josh Elmore speaks with Dr. Todd Grindal, President of SRI Education, about stepping into a high-stakes leadership role during a period of major disruption as federal funding priorities were shifting. Drawing on his progression through SRI and his background as a researcher, teacher, and administrator, Todd reflects on the importance of humility, listening, strategic clarity, and decision-making amid uncertainty. He shares how he led through crisis by focusing the organization on excellence, unique value, mission, and impact. Todd also offers a powerful lesson on looking for what is missing—the “white space”—when interpreting data and leading change.

Transcript

Dr. Josh Elmore (00:00)

Welcome to the Land and Lead podcast, where we explore the real stories behind leadership transitions, the setbacks, strategies, wins, and moments of growth, all aimed at helping other leaders land well and lead effectively. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore of Court Street Consulting. The Land and Lead podcast is supported by my advisory work at Court Street Consulting. I work with new presidents, executives with expanded mandates, and leaders facing complex change to help them think clearly, learn in real time, and make consequential decisions.

If you're navigating complexity where the stakes feel high and the path isn't obvious, that's the work that I do.

Today we're speaking with Dr. Todd Grindal, president of SRI Education, the education division of SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development institute known for world-changing technological innovations. In this role, Todd leads a diverse portfolio of research, evaluation, and technical assistance initiatives and is currently guiding the organization through a period of significant transition in the education funding and innovation landscape.

Todd's work sits at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, with a focus on early childhood, special education, and the responsible application of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. He has led major projects for the US Department of Education, the Administration for Children and Families, and state partners across the country. And he is known for designing rigorous, actionable studies that inform real-world decisions.

A former elementary and preschool teacher and school administrator, Todd brings a practitioner's perspective to his leadership. His scholarly expertise includes experimental and quasi-experimental methods, survey design, and policy analysis, and he has contributed to cross-disciplinary work on digital media and AI in education. 

He has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications, received national awards for methodological contributions, and has been invited to speak at venues the United Nations. Todd holds a doctorate and master's degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education. And from 2021 to 2024, Todd served as a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he taught future education leaders.

His career reflects a consistent focus on leading through complexity, building teams, and aligning research, innovation, and strategy to improve outcomes for children and families. Welcome to the show, Todd.

Todd Grindal, SRI (02:12)

Thanks, great to be here Josh.

Dr. Josh Elmore (02:14)

Yeah, certainly. Happy to have you. And can you share a bit about your background and your journey through roles at SRI?

Todd Grindal, SRI (02:20)

Sure. So I've been at SRI about nine years. I had been with a similar organization before then doing similar types of work. And as I came here, I had the opportunity first to lead a set of projects. Projects, as you said in the introduction, that were focused primarily on how do we best support and build systems that help young children, children with disabilities from pre-K all the way through post-secondary.

Moved from that into leading a portfolio of work and supporting the work across a set of researchers and technical assistance providers, to then co-leading a research center within SRI, and last year moving into the role of the president overseeing all of our education work.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:10)

Okay, so you've had progressive roles and how long have you been at SRI?

Todd Grindal, SRI (03:14)

It's been nine years, nine years last month.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:16)

Okay, congrats. Coming up on 10 and progressive into, it sounds like three, four different roles.

Todd Grindal, SRI (03:24)

Yes, yeah, I'd say that. Sometimes the roles are defined and bleed into one another, but essentially leading my own work, supporting a small team, co-leading with a larger team, and now the full group.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:37)

Okay. And what's the headcount of the organization that you're leading right now?

Todd Grindal, SRI (03:43)

So currently we're about a hundred people. The majority of folks here have terminal degrees in fields like statistics, education, psychology, others, a large group of folks who have previously worked in education in a variety of ways, folks who've worked in the federal state government, a lot of people who have classroom experience like myself, which is really valuable here. But yes, we're around 100 today.

Dr. Josh Elmore (03:45)

Okay, and kind of to keep that picture broadening out, can you tell us a little bit more about SRI and the situation when you entered the president role?

Todd Grindal, SRI (04:19)

Sure, well, let me back up. You had shared a little bit about SRI, the organization, but it is a fascinating place. So SRI is entering its 80th year this year. And over that period, we have been responsible for a set of world-changing innovations that I am sure are on your desk or in the pockets of the folks who are listening. The mouse. We invented the mouse. 

The internet began as a Defense Department project with three logons, one of which was at SRI. And since then, dozens of innovations, things related to Technicolor in the 1960s, to robotic surgery, to Siri, virtual personal assistance, you know, 10 years ago. And we continue to do that work. My work sits within the Education The Education Division, we're around 10 % of the institute.

So we're a small part of the Institute, we're one of five divisions within the Institute. And our work really sits within a unique space in education. So we do everything from that early stage research, trying to understand how learning works and how we can improve that. So that's a big part of our work, that early research. We also do a lot of work in evaluating major initiatives. There's a new curriculum, way of teaching, way of supporting teachers.

And we are among those groups who do the large scale experiments to understand, does that work? Does it have the impacts we want? Finally, we do a range of work helping states and districts and teachers to implement things that research and evidence already tells us the primary sponsor of our work throughout our history has been the federal government, with the Department of Education, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation. 

And in 2025, the federal government really began to rethink how it is engaging with this sort of research and technical assistance at various stages. So in the period right before I'm coming into this work, there's a major disruption in, not just in our business, again, federal government's a primary client that we work for, but across the field. ⁓ As our major, the major sponsor of our work is Rethinking Its Priorities and how those priorities are expressed in funding. 

So as I stepped in, we were in a period where work we had been doing for some time, projects that had been ongoing for some time, many of those were canceled or were given a end date that was well ahead of what we expected. Many of the grant competitions that we typically participate in that build the backlog of work that we have for years and years, those competitions were not held as the government rethought how it wants to engage in this space. So it was a moment as we came in crisis, right? There were serious limitations to our funding and some big questions about the future as I stepped into the role.

Dr. Josh Elmore (07:21)

Wow. And that is, ⁓ right, it sounds like nine years at SRI with kind of continuity across kind of that progression that you had. And then you step into kind of the highest order role, highest level of responsibility among crises, among disruption. And so you've been in the role for coming up on a year now, how long?

Todd Grindal, SRI (07:44)

Well, so was quite fortunate. we made the decision me to take on this role just about a year ago this week, actually. ⁓ But I was fortunate to have a nice transition period with my predecessor. My predecessor had been a mentor to me as the person who had hired me, brought me into SRI and helped me grow into those other roles. 

So we made the choice that we wanted a good 60 days after the decision had been made for me to begin to understand the other, what is changing in this role? What are those parts of this role that in my previous duties, I just didn't understand, didn't have visibility on? What are all those unwritten down, unspoken things that she had gained in her seven years, I think in the role before it passed to me? So was really fortunate to have that transition period. But yeah, was May of last year that we made the decision.

Dr. Josh Elmore (08:36)

So, May of last year, you're coming after a leader who's been there for seven years. So a lot of the time that you've been in that role, but the role is shifting. So even she hasn't experienced the things that you're going to have to experience as a new leader coming into the role. So as you've kind of spent this past year, what strategies have helped you navigate the transition into president?

Todd Grindal, SRI (09:01)

Well, the first thing I did was to admit that I had a lot to learn, to admit that to myself and to bring that humility to the role with my peers and with the staff that I was going to be supporting as the president. And the best thing for me to do right away was to listen. I knew a portion of our organization and I knew it very, very well. 

But as I said, we do such a wide range of work, mean, across all of those functions, we are pre-K to post-secondary and people who know this work very deeply, you know, some of the top experts in the country. So I took that initial period of two months to systematically through folks in the organization who I don't typically connect with and had not and really listen to what is motivating their work? What are they looking to accomplish? I was really interested to know everybody's why. Why do you do this? Why did you choose to do this?

Rather than anything else that you might do in this work. We have fantastically smart and accomplished people in this organization. And they chose to be here. They chose to do this I wanted to know why they were doing that. And then I wanted to know better, what's getting in your way? What's getting in your way from really accomplishing those things?

And the answers, some things were things that I felt like I knew, like, OK, that's really similar to my experience, right? Or that's what I understood to be your motivation. And others really surprised me. ⁓ So I took that period early on to try to better understand our organization internally, what's driving folks and what's making things hard. I also took that time to reach out to people who I've seen throughout my career who I thought exhibited elements of really good leadership. 

And I spoke to them, shared them with them really openly what I was moving into and what I understood to be the strengths of the organization, the challenges within the field, and got their feedback on how they've approached similar situations, what motivated them and helped to drive them in their leadership.

So that was, I definitely took this period of looking to understand before I came in and said, okay, hey folks, I've got the answer. I know exactly what we're going to do. ⁓ I think what I learned is that, you know, I didn't need to come in and have all the answers in this case. That's not what folks were looking for. 

They were looking for an understanding of where we stood and some clarity about a direction that we could go. There was no doubt that we were in a storm, right? It was a raging storm all around us. And they wanted to see that there is a pathway that if we all pull together, we can sail through this storm. So I looked to formulate that with what I was hearing from my peers, people who had been my peers and the rest of the staff. 

And so, as I did that in that two month period where I got to work alongside my predecessor in this transition and then came in with a couple of pretty simple things that I thought that we needed to do as an organization. There were things happening outside of our control, right? 

There were policy decisions and changes in the field that we could not in our day to day have any big influence on, what decided what we needed to do is to focus on those things that we can influence. And that was, this may seem very simple, to produce excellent work for our clients every single day. That's how you build trust, that's how you retain work, and ultimately that's how you grow. So we work to define within our context, what is excellence? What does that mean? I mean we can all say that, but what does it mean for you in different roles to deliver excellence every day?

So we defined that, made that very clear. And then the second part of that was, let's understand what makes us uniquely valuable in this situation. We have several competitors, partners, full of really just brilliant people doing great work. And in the past, when funding was ample, it was good enough just to be smart, right? To be smart and competent. That's just not good enough anymore.

So we had to get sharper both in understanding our value articulating that with our clients and partners. that, you know, and across all of that, there's change and a need for changes to adapt to the new environment, but also making sure that we are holding on to those things that have helped to make this a successful and fantastically impactful organization for decades and decades. So there's things in there that need to be protected and other things that you identified need to be evolved pretty quickly.

Dr. Josh Elmore (13:50)

Yeah, and so, you know, what strikes me along this kind of journey of leading in the present moment through is the progression that you've taken through. This is your first president role, correct? you're leading an organization you've been part of for a long period of time. you you know, you mentioned your peers, you have your predecessor who's kind of there to kind of help guide you.

Todd Grindal, SRI (14:03)

Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Josh Elmore (14:14)

You have your giving you some insight around how they've done things in the past. And what has surprised you terms of, know, wow, like, you know, this is a leadership. This is a practice that I've I'm trying for the first time and I'm seeing it's working or this is something and I'm iterating on it from a leadership perspective. Where is kind of head at as it relates to kind of that past year leading in this new way, in this intense environment, what are some lessons that you're taking away right now?

Todd Grindal, SRI (14:45)

Well, I think one is certainly humility. I find that every time I think I know the path forward and the right way to go, it's always more complicated. And I find that I'm continuing to learn as I move forward in this space. You can't let that limit you from taking action, you know, especially in midst of a crisis, but certainly being open to understanding and where did I get that wrong and collecting that feedback to make sure that we can quickly pivot.

Like a lot of folks, I think I've talked to in similar spaces where you are rewarded and you move up in your career because of strong in domain technical competence. I mean that's certainly true here. I developed a reputation as a scholar, right? I wrote peer reviewed papers and presented at conferences. And those were the things that enabled success for me up to this point. 

To realize there's a whole other aspect of this and there are several skills, just related to running a large business, ⁓ to supporting the HR components of that business, the finance and the accounting. So there's, I think I knew that was there, but I find every month I'm learning something new about how to best operate in this space. those are among the same things, the consistent things that I feel like I've learned. 

The other is that, and this is something I think I've realized about, you know, six months into the role was that that initial listening phase that I did. So that that was great, but it wasn't enough. That doesn't stop the range of people whom I'm in day to day contact with. It has it has narrowed in some ways. And those folks have changed. 

So whereas in the past, I could expect to sort of be bumping into folks virtually or in person in a variety of ways to understand how is it going. I had to be a lot more explicit about that. And to earn the trust of people when saying, hey, I really want to know how it's going. And I really want you to share with me openly about what continues to be your why, what is driving you, and what some of those challenges may be.

So getting more systematic about that as part of my continued practice is something that I didn't have on my radar right away and is now a core part of what I'm doing on a week to week, month to month basis.

Dr. Josh Elmore (17:07)

Yeah. And right. So that brings up this idea for me in my head around this idea of, A, what a leader may say, people take more seriously. that there's like your words carry more weight. And then B, idea of trying to get trust and, you know, people also seeing that what they say to you is something different. 

You know, you're going to have a different rapport, different type of conversation than you would have in the hallway when you're doing some scholarly research with your peers and they're gonna openly, I imagine. And now, that explicitness, being explicit, the formality of being explicit can even introduce ⁓ a sense of formality or higher stakes maybe about what you share. Do you experience that?

Todd Grindal, SRI (17:48)

Absolutely. And I think at first I was a little taken aback by it saying, oh my goodness, people aren't talking to me in the same way that they used to. And that was, I experienced that personally as a loss. These are, these are my colleagues and people that I could share openly with about what I may be struggling within in my research or my plans for the future. And to realize that that's changed. Particularly, I mentioned that as I went through these different roles, several of these were co-led.

I had had over these eight, nine years, opportunities to be partners with people. And now they were looking to me to make decisions about the organization. And we're all doing this in a moment of big transitions and crisis. Part of what we had to do as our funding decreased is we had to reduce the size of our staff. 

It was a tremendously painful thing to do. These people I've known and I'm close to, but it's also painful for the organization. Being able to, taking the time, I think, to build that trust with folks that they can share with me, that I'm going to be transparent with them about where we're headed and where we stand. I think there was a learning that that's not just going to be given. That's not just credit that I get from having worked with them in the past.

They need me to demonstrate that I'm worthy of that trust in this role, and that's gonna take time. It's not enough to say, hey, my door is open, you can tell me anything. You've got to be true to that within your job, and that's going to take.

Dr. Josh Elmore (19:27)

Yeah, and kind of going to that bigger macro picture of transformation, broader transition, right? You're going through a transition, the organization is going through a transition, so it's kind of both simultaneously. How have you been strokes leading the organization through that transition?

Todd Grindal, SRI (19:46)

So the first was developing a strategy. What are we gonna do? How are we going to be moving forward differently and how are we going to succeed? ⁓ And we took some time to develop that during the transition period. But once that strategy had been developed, what I have attempted to do is to anchor everything I'm doing in those simple handful of key understandable components of our strategy.

And to help people to understand that, you know, component A, this is what we all need to do. This is why we're doing it. Here's how we know that that continues to do well, do well, or it needs to shift gears in some way. And to structure all of my communications, our all hands meetings, the things we're celebrating and the things that we're working on around that strategy. 

And for everybody to continue to see that. I think that's been really important. And among the things that I'm seeing as evidence of success is I'm hearing people across the division communicate with one another in terms of the strategy as well. We're doing this because, right? Or this is an example of some of the key strategic things that we're trying to do. 

And then the focus on the execution of that and identifying what are the things that I can do, those barriers that are in the way with any large organization. Barriers emerge over time for some, some reasons that we have processes or bottlenecks in place. Let's identify those. Let's clear those away so that we can continue, to do our, to do our work and to do it successfully.

Dr. Josh Elmore (21:26)

Yeah. And you mentioned this idea of, didn't have all the answers, but folks wanted some clarity. And so building that strategy and that way forward gives them that clarity. And you hearing people infusing the strategy into their own actions is a little bit of evidence. You're a researcher, you're a scholar. To what extent have you built in kind of metrics of success or how have you measured or looked at the data a leadership perspective of like, are these things working that I'm doing?

Todd Grindal, SRI (21:54)

So certainly, and as an organization with a lot of researchers, we have lots of data. It's given the disciplinary expertise of the staff here, if you're gonna use a piece of data, you better know well, what is the sample that that came from? How representative is that of the organization?

Is your interpretation of that appropriate? You get a full peer review anytime you come with a piece of data. So I certainly look at quite a bit of metrics as well about our success in executing different parts of that. in terms of what I communicate with the staff around the key things that we need to do, I keep those pretty simple. And I keep them focused on metrics that we can all understand. Why does that matter? 

And we can all map to our work, whether you are the leader of a multi-million dollar project, whether you are investigating some transformational approach to teaching and learning, or whether you're helping to go and collect those data on the studies to organize and make sure everything's secure, to work with the statistics, everybody can anchor to those straightforward metrics. And I present them, I have a set of metrics that I present every time we talk, every single time.

And I talk about why they're met, why they matter. And when we're doing well, I share that as a celebration and we're not try to make sure that that's clear. But data is certainly critical to understanding how we're being successful. It's not the only thing though. I think important insights that you get from talking, talking with the staff, talking with our clients.

And particularly for our work, because there is a public interest nature to our work. We're a nonprofit organization that comes with a mission. And so at the end of the day, we need to be serving that mission. The answers to whether we're doing that often sit far outside of the people who are doing work or even the people who are paying our bills. So trying to stay connected to those and listening very carefully to those as well.

Dr. Josh Elmore (24:01)

Yeah, yeah, the long of chain of impact, between where in organization development terms, we say, like, who is the client? And you could argue that, right, the client is maybe the children that are learning, right, because at the end of the day, everything that you're building out and working towards is enhancing that ecosystem of pedagogy and learning, right?

Todd Grindal, SRI (24:21)

You're absolutely right Josh and that is something that as part of this transition something that we've come back come back to is Centering  on organizationally. What is our why and who are we looking to serve? ⁓ And those are absolutely those are the students in school Those are the teachers who are in those classrooms Those are the parents who pack those kids up and send them off to school every day. 

We need to be serving them and whether or not they're making the decision of whether we receive this grant or continue on with this contract, we need to have them in our focus every day in our work. And so that is hard to do when you have the demands of highly technical field, very competitive field. And the folks who are on the other side of our work and our clients, the federal government, people in philanthropy are brilliant, dedicated, people, ⁓ every single one of them that we get the chance to interact with, very high standards. So we have to both be focused there and providing them with excellence and then providing impact across the field.

Dr. Josh Elmore (25:27)

Yeah, stakeholder management. So a question I like to ask a lot of my guests the 1980s, John Gabarro ran a few studies on general managers and presidents as they pursued new roles and wrote the results in the book, Dynamics of Taking Charge. Gabarro explained that an executive has fully taken charge when they have mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be managing the organization as efficiently as the resources, constraints, and the manager's own ability allow.

Thinking about this definition where 100 % is having fully taken charge in your new assignment, what percent would you say you are at now?

Todd Grindal, SRI (26:04)

Oh goodness, I'd say, you know, talk to me at 10 in the morning on Monday, it's one answer. Talk to me at three in the afternoon that day and it's a different one. There continues to be a lot of back and forth, a lot of learning, a lot of learning. So I do think, you know, maybe I'd set that at maybe three quarters. 

And if I'm being optimistic, I think I'd set it at three quarters. I think when I evaluate myself and when I talk to the board of directors and the CEO of our work, you know, some things they point to is that what we've been able to do is set a clear direction. We have a plan and we can, we have a plan and we understand how to execute on that plan. And so I think that clear direction getting to that was a big part of ⁓ taking charge. 

I feel like I'm able to improving in my capacity to make decisions with confidence and transparency in ways that I am increasingly comfortable with the idea that when the decisions come to me, it is typically because there's not a clear answer. If there was a clear answer, likely that would have been answered by the center directors, the team leads, the principal investigator of the project. 

And without a clear answer, there's people who might be on one side of that, one side on the other. And for me, helping to anchor that on what is our mission, what is our strategy, and which is answer that's going to push us forward there, rather than being as concerned about how will this play here and how will that be here? That ability to make those decisions quickly and with confidence and transparency, I think that's an area where I've grown.

Certainly aspects of this job that I continue to learn every day. There's a handful of things that I know that I don't know, and there's things I don't know that I don't know that keep coming up.

Dr. Josh Elmore (27:58)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that idea of growth and knowing what you know, and not knowing what you don't know is, I think, a fuel for iterating on your own leadership. So you're iterating on the organization, it's in transition, you're in transition, and you can infuse that ⁓ in kind of both domains. 

But also, I think, going back to that idea of humility that you shared, the path is always more complicated. I think ⁓ that dose of humility, I imagine that's very helpful as you're going forward in terms of working with the board or talking about these things, but also taking decisions. So you're able to act, but you're also kind of taking it from a perspective of absence of answers. Here's my best way forward. Here's the best way forward.

Todd Grindal, SRI (28:41)

I am privileged to work, as I said, describe the staff here. The people I work with are brilliant, brilliant dedicated people. And they know a lot, not just about their specific area of expertise, but they have insights that are really valuable for shaping our strategy, for helping the execution of that, for understanding our impact.

So that humility is essential here. I mean, not to mention the folks on our board who are tremendously successful from those folks on our board who were high level military officials, astronaut leaders in business and entrepreneurship, being open to receiving and really incorporating all of that good guidance that they're willing to provide has been an important part for me. I wake up with that humility every single day.

Dr. Josh Elmore (29:37)

Hmm. And final question, what advice would you share with leaders currently entering a new high stakes role?

Todd Grindal, SRI (29:44)

You know, there's a couple of things  I pointed to throughout. think there is that investment early on in understanding how the organization works, what our strengths are, how, you know, where are those places where you do have latitude to move and where are those places where early on you should, you should respect those boundaries and, and not mess with things. I mean, that's always important, but that's not particularly novel advice, right? 

I think those are things that I picked up in, you know, reading in the leadership literature as I got ready for this and then talking to my peers. I mean, other things that have been key to what I did is, you know, keeping the messages to the team pretty simple and actionable. You know, for us, that was in the midst of this crisis. You can focus on providing excellence every day. 

And here's what excellence means. I think for externally, really thinking about being intentional in determining what's our unique value, how do we communicate that value to the field? We see that value, right? We're here every day. I know how brilliant and capable all those people are, but to take a step back and get that perspective from others. think I'd give, but again, those things seem like a lot of the good advice that I got in reading in this space and talking to others. 

I think the other thing I'd point to, and it maybe speaks a little bit to but you had asked about data. For those of you who are watching this on screen, you maybe can see this airplane photo that's next to me. But for those who might be listening, it's a photo of an airplane, World War II era airplane with red dots all over it. So there's a story there that is really useful and there's a reason I hang that in my wall. So Second World War, Allies were concerned about, they were losing too many planes flying into Europe.

And so all of the planes that came back to the base, they mapped. Where are they getting hit? Where are the holes in those planes as they came back? And they made this graph that you see here with those red dots indicating where the planes had been damaged. And so the first look at that says, OK, I know what we need to do. 

We need to increase the fortifications and the strength of the airplane in those places where we're seeing all those bullet holes, where we're seeing all those hits. Well, there was a member of the team whose name was Abraham Wald who said, you're missing the key point, which is we're only looking at those planes that returned to the base. We are missing all of those planes that crashed and went down. We need to look in the places where we don't see the damage when we think about where to fortify the planes.

So it's a very specific context, but for me, that has been really helpful to stop when I think I understand the situation, I understand the data, I'm really getting that insight about how the staff are thinking, to think about what am I missing? What am I not seeing here? What is the version of the white spaces on that airplane that are here in this context? And that is really hard.

So much so that for me, it has had to become a discipline where I put this giant picture next to my desk. I see it as soon as I walk into my office every day to remind myself to look in those white spaces.

Dr. Josh Elmore (33:02)

Yeah, that's really powerful. ⁓ The idea of kind of what's missing. it reminds me kind of a fundamental dimensions of visioning and leadership. right. What is vision if not to see something that others don't? Right. And to lead is to kind of be able to kind action on those things and manifest in the absence of ⁓ of the answers. And, you know, probably why you're experiencing a lot of white space in terms of the problems that people are bringing you.

You're living in the white space, that way forward. Really powerful analogy and I think super helpful for articulating the responsibility of being at the top. Todd, thanks for joining us. Is there anything you'd like to share that's coming up for you or SRI?

Todd Grindal, SRI (33:42)

Sure. So again, thank you so much for having me here. ⁓ One of the things we're really excited about, we just launched last month, is a new research center within SRI education. It's our center for the future of education and technology. So we sit in this unique space at SRI, this history of fundamental Silicon Valley innovation and real depth in understanding what works in education. 

That has enabled us to connect to all the parts of the education ecosystem from students, their parents, teachers, administrators, policymakers, as well as those Silicon Valley innovators, those innovators all across the world who are developing that next big thing. ⁓ Some of those folks sit across the Institute as part of our Institute for Computer Sciences.

So within our Center for the Future of Education and Technology, we are developing new solutions that can go out and support teachers and students. We are working with people who already have innovations, looking to bring those to market, to understand what do you need to do to scale and to be successful in this space, and creating information for decision makers at various levels. 

The folks who running the school district, the teacher who's walking into that classroom and that parent and that student about what are the things you need to look for in terms of the evidence of quality and impact in these tools. So that's something that we've made where I talked about looking to demonstrate our unique value. That is a only at SRI kind of thing because of where we sit, because of our history. And so we're really excited about where that's headed.

Dr. Josh Elmore (35:24)

Yeah, wow. mean, and so is there a place that folks can go to learn more about that new initiative?

Todd Grindal, SRI (35:30)

Sure, so I'd encourage folks to visit sri.com. There you can drill down to more information on what we're doing in the education division in the Center for the Future of Education and Technology and take a look at the wide range of fascinating world changing work that happens at the institute.

Dr. Josh Elmore (35:47)

Amazing. Well, Todd, thanks again for joining us. Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with us.

Todd Grindal, SRI (35:52)

All right, my pleasure. Thanks so much, Josh.

Dr. Josh Elmore (35:54)

The Land and Lead podcast is supported by my advisory work at Court Street Consulting. I work with new presidents, executives with expanded mandates and leaders facing complex change to help them think clearly, learn in real time and make consequential decisions. If you're navigating complexity where the stakes feel high and the path isn't obvious, that's the work that I do. 

Thanks so much for listening to the Land and Lead podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Josh Elmore. Tune in next time for more stories from leaders navigating high stakes role transitions.