About the Presenters

Richard K. Cohen is the Assistant Superintendent of the Metuchen School District in New Jersey and serves as co-adjunct faculty at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Before becoming Assistant Superintendent, Richard led as Principal for Red Bank Primary School in Red Bank, New Jersey and acted as Founding Director of a new bilingual school, Colegio Americano, in San Salvador, El Salvador. His professional experiences as an educator range from working in predominantly low-income public and charter schools to some of the most affluent public and private schools.

Rick has served as a leader of social-emotional learning (SEL) at the district, county, state, and national levels. His work infusing academic state standards and SEL skills together with evidence-based character education has won national and state of New Jersey School of Character Awards and a National Promising Practice Award from Character.org. In 2015, Rick also served on the New Jersey State Standards Revision Committee, helping add self-reflection and metacognition into academic state standards. Rick’s work has been published in Character.org’s 11 Principles Framework for Schools, Edutopia, and NJEA Review’s “Great Ideas” column. Rick is coauthor of The Metacognitive Student, which has won two national awards for Best Indie Book in Education (Forewords Reviews 2021 and IPPY Awards 2022) and has been featured in articles in Edutopia and Educational Leadership. Rick received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in educational administration from Rutgers University.

Mark Wojciechowski is an educator at heart who began his career working in schools as a teacher, resource specialist, manager of professional development programs, and school counselor. Having been deeply embedded in the education technology sector for the last two decades, he brings compassion and a wide breadth of experience to his current role with Varsity Tutors for Schools as senior director of education partnerships.

Brian Galvin is the Chief Academic Officer for Varsity Tutors, the nation’s largest live learning platform. A lifelong educator with a master’s degree in education from the University of Michigan, he has taught thousands of students, trained hundreds of instructors, and authored dozens of lesson books. At Varsity Tutors, he oversees the development of live academic and enrichment classes, adaptive assessments, and on-demand learning programs. He is also creator and host of the company’s StarCourse lessons—taught with astronauts, Olympians, TV hosts, and other distinguished teachers—and Test Prep 4 All series. His educational videos have over three million views on YouTube.