Rewiring Education

John D. Couch, Apple's first vice president of education, has always been a proponent of personalized learning. Couch was recruited by Steve Jobs in 1978, becoming Apple's fifty-fourth employee. He left in 1984 to help a struggling K-12 school in San Diego that is now a National Blue Ribbon School. At Jobs's request, Couch returned to Apple in 2002, tasked with bringing education into the digital age. He was Apple's representative for President Obama's National Education Technology Plan and ConnectEd initiative and has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Philadelphia for "Innovation in Education."

Jason Towne is a research fellow at Harvard University, where he focuses on motivation, learning, and technology. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Conversations with America's Best Teachers, in which he interviewed eighteen National Teacher of the Year Award winners and nominees about what they do differently. Towne received his BS degree in public policy and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2009. He earned his master's degree in Education from Harvard in 2015, where he studied motivational psychology and education technology, codirected the prestigious Harvard Innovative Ventures in Education (HIVE) program, and won the coveted Harvard Leadership in Education Award. Prior to Harvard, he was an executive for the YMCA, overseeing youth development.

P. J. Ochlan, an Audie Award-nominated and multiple AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, has recorded close to 200 audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival (under Joseph Papp), critically acclaimed feature films, and regular roles in television series. Along the way, he's worked with countless icons, including Jodie Foster, Clint Eastwood, Robin Williams, Al Pacino, and Garry Marshall.