Personalizing Special Education at Scale: Leveraging AI and Evidence-Based Practices for Outcomes and Efficiency

About the Presenters

Mara Steiu is the Co-founder and CEO of Journify Learning, the evidence-based AI assistant that maximizes the efficiency and effectiveness of every special educator. Co-built with special educators, Journify supports schools and districts in California, Washington, Colorado, and Wisconsin. It won the Tools Competition K–12 Learning track—selected from over 1,000 global edtech companies—and was certified by Digital Promise as a Responsibly Designed AI solution. Mara holds an MBA and MA in education from Stanford University and previously worked as a Product Manager at Microsoft and Twitter. Her work is grounded in research on Universal Design for Learning (UDL), high-leverage practices, and special education policy. Passionate about K–12 edtech and educational equity, Mara comes from a family of public school teachers and launched her first edtech venture as a teenager—founding iXperiment, Romania’s first high school startup accelerator, which has helped hundreds of students launch their own businesses.

Parker Van Nostrand is the Product Certifications Project Director at Digital Promise. In his current role, he leads the creation of trusted third-party validations for edtech products in areas like research-based design, learner variability, and alignment to the ESSA Tiers of Evidence. In addition, he supports district leaders to make evidence-based decisions about edtech. He has a background in teaching language arts at a bilingual school and edtech operations, and brings a passion for supporting multilingual learners to his role at Digital Promise. He holds a B.A. in applied linguistics from Grinnell College and an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Amsterdam, where he researched the long-term efficacy of bilingual school programs in Europe.

About the Moderator

Barbara Pape, Senior Director for the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise, led a three-year national survey on learner variability and teacher practice, wrote the paper defining learner variability, hosts a monthly webinar series, and co-developed The IEP Project. Previously, she worked in policy analysis and communications for nonprofits and in the U.S. Senate. Barbara has written for numerous publications, including The 74, Getting Smart, and Parents Magazine, and was editor of the first electronically delivered education newsletter, the Daily Report Card. She also produced the Teaching & Learning conference for the National Board, worked in the communications office for the AFT during President Al Shanker’s tenure, and headed up government relations for the City Colleges of Chicago. As a first-generation college student, she earned an Ed.M. at Harvard in reading and literacy and is working on a Ph.D. at the University College London. She launched her career as a middle school language arts teacher.