About ParentPal

ParentPal™ provides you everything you need to support, track and celebrate your child’s healthy development in one app. Developed by the creators of Baby Einstein and Teaching Strategies, the leader in early childhood and pre-school curriculum and assessment, ParentPal’s Daily Plan, Milestones, Health and Care Trackers, and vast library of age-based activities and resources, take the guesswork out of parenting.

The first three years of a child’s life are a critical time to support brain development while also forging a lasting bond between parent and child through rich play and interaction.  ParentPal helps turn the “whole child approach” into a “whole parenting approach” by combining everything needed into a single resource for tracking milestones, meaningful and age-appropriate play, supporting a healthy routine, and capturing (and sharing) it all. With ParentPal, the all-in-one parenting app, mom and dad can replace frantic online searches about what’s “normal” with confidence, knowing that they have everything needed to help their child grow and thrive.

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Teaching Strategies Executive Biographies  

John Olson | Chief Executive Officer

A Navy veteran and mission-oriented education leader, John has distinguished himself through a commitment to service and advocacy that strongly aligns with the Teaching Strategies legacy and vision. John’s experience in education includes several leadership and board roles at education companies and colleges working across the pre-K, K-12, and higher education spectrum. During this period, John led and championed experiential summer learning efforts, supported school districts and charter schools in service of non-traditional students, and facilitated lifelong learning for young adults seeking new careers. He has also previously served as a trustee of Sierra Nevada College and currently serves as a trustee of the Naval Academy Foundation. Influenced by his experience as a father of a disabled child, John is passionate about finding and unleashing the unique potential in every child. He is a founding board member of Variety – the Children’s Charity of the National Capital Region, which supports the needs of low-income children with mobility impairments and their families. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and received an M.B.A. from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Celia Stokes | President, Consumer Division & Product Strategy

Celia leads Teaching Strategies’ product team in creating the next generation of product offerings—combining 30 years of pedagogical expertise with the power of data and a digital platform to further empower teachers, administrators, and families. Celia has more than 25 years in CEO, executive leadership, board, and strategic consulting roles for disruptive growth-oriented and mission-driven companies across B2C, B2B/G, and enterprise SaaS models. Her work has spanned the ed-tech, IoT, telematics, Usage-Based-Insurance (UBI), mobile app, Internet/e-commerce, and airline industries. She has experience across public, private, venture-backed, and private-equity backed companies and has participated in multiple transaction events, including successful IPO and private-equity transactions. Before joining Teaching Strategies, Celia was the CEO at eDriving, where she led the development of a smart-phone-based, global enterprise SaaS product that reduced vehicle crashes by up to 67%—a product that was rapidly adopted by Fortune 250 global companies, including Amazon for their employee and contract drivers in multiple countries. Celia has also held leadership roles at K12 and Independence Air, where she managed passionate, mission-driven teams and spearheaded marketing and customer experience initiatives that resulted in market leadership positions and unprecedented growth for the organizations she served. After more than 15 years of deep experience across multiple parts of the education space, Celia was specifically drawn to the early childhood years, during which 80–90% of brain development occurs. She strongly believes that engaging and investing in these young minds during prime development stages is the best way to achieve significant and indelible positive outcomes for children.

Breeyn Mack | Vice President of Education

As the Vice President of Educational Content, Breeyn oversees the instructional design of educational resources and professional development initiatives that support educators and families. Breeyn’s passion for empowering educators with innovative, high-quality, and developmentally appropriate classroom resources, coaching, and implementation support are inspired and informed by her experience in the classroom as a pre-kindergarten teacher and program director. In her almost 10 years at Teaching Strategies, Breeyn has collaborated with educators in the field to create curriculum, assessment, and professional development materials to support teachers, coaches, and administrators, including coauthoring Coaching to Fidelity, Preschool Edition. Prior to becoming a preschool teacher and director, Breeyn also spent time in public schools teaching in 2nd and 5th grade inclusion classrooms. Breeyn’s background in education gives her a unique perspective on the challenges, opportunities, and obstacles educators face every day. Breeyn and her team of educators are driven by a commitment to creating the resources they wished they had when they were in the classroom. Educators and families deserve the most intentional and respectful resources to support them in the most important work they do.

Carrie Germeroth | PhD & Educational consultant for ParentPal

Carrie Germeroth, PhD, has primary expertise in early childhood development and learning with a focus on social emotional development and parent support and education, particularly with under-resourced populations (e.g., low-income, refugee, and immigrant). She has extensive experience in both leading and managing research projects designed to increase outcomes for both parent and child health and well-being. For example, she recently led an evaluation of a text-based parent education program that increase children’s language skills particularly in low-income families. She has managed multiple large-scale studies, including an efficacy study examining a curriculum designed to improve executive function in early childhood students as well as a longitudinal study examining the effectiveness of the Building Blocks math curriculum to improve students’ math outcomes. Additionally, she has served as project manager on a needs assessment for a large urban school district, evaluating needs in the areas of curriculum and instruction, coordination of support for at-risk students, and financial adequacy of state funding. Germeroth currently serves as a member of the Colorado Department of Education’s School Readiness assessment subcommittee tasked with providing recommendations on school readiness assessment design features. She also served as project manager on the development of Colorado’s Early Learning and Development Guidelines as well as the Pre-Kindergarten Standards for the State of North Dakota. She is trained on numerous assessments of cognitive and social-emotional skills for preschool and kindergarten children (TEAM, Woodcock Johnson, K-BIT, TEMA, TERA, CBQ, BASC, Posner Attention tasks, Delay of Gratification, NEPSY, PALS, PPVT, and TSG) as well as classroom assessments (CLASS and ELLCO). She has experience in both quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques such as classroom observations, field study, and management of large databases. She has published research in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Early Child Development and Care, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Sciences, American Journal of Play, and the Oxford Handbook of Play. Germeroth received a doctorate in Experimental Psychology with a focus in Cognitive Development from the University of Louisville.

Nicol Russell | Vice President of Implementation Research

Nicol Russell currently serves as Vice President of Implementation Research for Teaching Strategies, LLC. She has been a teacher, a school administrator, a Head Start State Collaboration Director, and a State-level administrator for the Arizona Department of Education. She currently serves as an at-large Board member for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and as a member of the ReadOn Arizona State Advisory Board. She has formerly served as Treasurer for the National Association of Early Childhood Specialist in State Departments of Education (NAECS-SDE) , on the First Things First Board, and Catholic Charities Board. Nicol holds a bachelor’s and Masterʻs degree in early childhood education and a Doctor of Education degree in educational leadership. Her research interests include the inequities in education for young Indigenous and Black children.

Emily Roden | President, ReadyRosie

Emily Roden uses her experience in creating and implementing family partnership strategies and tools in schools across the U.S. to support the critical work of family engagement in all products and services at Teaching Strategies. A former classroom teacher and educational consultant, Emily has spent her entire professional career focused on improving outcomes for children. After becoming a parent in 2008, Emily personally and professionally explored the impactful role that families play in student achievement. Recognizing a gap in current research-based tools to support family engagement in public schools, she gathered a team of developers, filmmakers, and early childhood experts and founded ReadyRosie—a comprehensive family engagement solution. Now as a part of the Teaching Strategies family, the ReadyRosie™ family engagement tools are being implemented by schools and programs countrywide. The innovative work of Emily and the ReadyRosie team has been highlighted by the White House Summit on Early Education, the Clinton Global Initiative, the LEGO Foundation Idea Conference, and multiple publications and journals. Emily has become a leader in promoting transformative family engagement and now speaks locally and nationally to encourage other social impact entrepreneurs. “While there are so many factors that contributed to my own education, my positive early learning experiences and my family developed in me the foundations of emotional security, confidence, creativity, and curiosity. I can’t believe I now get to work in an organization that is working around the clock to ensure that all children have those foundations through their school and family experiences.”

About Teaching Strategies

With ground-breaking solutions and a strong belief that a child’s first eight years form a critical foundation for school success, Teaching Strategies has been an advocate for the early education community for over 40 years. Today, Teaching Strategies provides curriculum, assessment, professional development, and family connection resources to public, private and Head Start programs across the country. Its products, the award-winning Creative Curriculum® for Preschool, the widely-adopted assessment solution, GOLD®, and Tadpoles® are found in over 270,000 classrooms and reach over 2 million children each year. To learn why thousands of early childhood programs and many states choose to partner with Teaching Strategies to help ensure children’s success in school and in life, visit teachingstrategies.com and follow us on Twitter @TeachStrategies.