Textbook 2.0

Neeru Khosla is a firm believer in the power of education. She wants the rigor and accountability of for profit models to apply to non-profits. Neeru is a member of the Board at The Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, where she has served since 1997, caters to gifted and talented students and is internationally recognized. Neeru is also on the Advisory Board of the American India Foundation, a leading international development organization charged with accelerating social and economic change in India. She previously served as a trustee of the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation and Connexions, a Rice University open-source project. Neeru’s commitment to education is evidenced by her role on the National Advisory Board for DonorsChoose, an organization dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials in U.S. public schools. Neeru is one of the founding members of the K-12 Initiative of the D-School (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) at Stanford University and a member of the committee to expand the program. Neeru is currently the Co-Founder & Chairperson of CK12 Foundation. CK12 is a non-profit organization launched in 2006, which aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide.

Neeru holds a bachelor’s degree from Delhi University/San Jose State, a master’s degree in Molecular Biology from San Jose State, and a master’s in Education from Stanford University.

Murugan Pal a serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, Bay Area, USA. Murugan is currently the Co-Founder & President of CK12 Foundation. CK12 is a non-profit organization launched in 2006, that aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide. Prior to CK12, Murugan had a brief tenure with Foundation Capital as Entrepreneur-In-Residence. Previously, Murugan was the founder and CTO of SpikeSource. Before founding SpikeSource, Pal was an entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Previously, he was a Founding Engineer of e-business software company Asera, Inc. Before Asera, Pal was a principal developer at Oracle Corporation in the Application Server division and was part of the company’s early XML initiatives. Prior to Oracle, he was one of the lead developers of Versant Corporation’s Object Database. Pal has worked on real-time enterprise technologies, composite applications, service-oriented architecture runtimes, relational databases, object databases, and robotics and manufacturing automation.

Pal holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, affiliated to Madurai University in India, a Master’s in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University, a Master’s in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and was a Doctoral Candidate in Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University.

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