Industry: Education & Training Services

Pivto Digital Learning

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is Pivto Digital Learning?

Pivto Digital Learning transforms digital learning for the healthcare industry. Pivto provides custom eLearning experiences through consumer-focused technologies – mobile, micro, and social. Cinematic quality video-based learning is delivered through E-Laborate, our online LMS platform. Our platform, E-Laborate, is simple to use with a modern user interface. Our clients include leading healthcare systems, medical organizations, pharmaceutical & medical device companies, and public health agencies & associations. We help healthcare organizations train employees, customers, or patients anytime, anywhere, from any device.

Company Leadership

Kelley Robson

founder & cEO

Kelley Robson brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in healthcare – including several startup organizations. Kelley’s healthcare industry experience includes sales, marketing, and training roles at GSK, Baxter Healthcare, and Siemens. Kelley is a graduate of the University of Missouri.

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JAKAPA

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2022 | Status: Active

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What is JAKAPA?

JAKAPA measures, trains, and tracks soft skills. Bad soft skills are the #1 reason someone will be fired, and bad manager soft skills are a top reason why great employees quit. JAKAPA helps businesses improve their productivity and decrease turnover by providing data-driven answers to 3 of our client’s critical questions about training and engagement:
1. Are my company’s employee development initiatives actually working?
2. How can I help my employees improve their soft skills outside of training and feedback sessions?
3. How do I catch employee development disengagement early so I can intervene before it becomes permanent?
We achieve this using reliable and validated assessment technology, daily soft skill challenges, and an actionable dashboard. JAKAPA gives management and individual employees data clarity around their real-time strengths, weaknesses, and engagement metrics.

Company Leadership

Gavin Pringle

cEO

Gavin Pringle got his entrepreneurial start when he noticed a lack of focus on soft skills in traditional education. This alarmed him due to his experience managing successful teams as a Navy Submariner. Gavin was inspired to found JAKAPA when he learned that bad soft skills are a top reason for employee turnover. He wants to help every business focus on improving their employees’ soft skills by providing frequent measurement, training, and tracking.

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Lisa Riegel

coO

Dr. Lisa Riegel is the chief designer for the Skill Builder Challenge Platform in JAKAPA. She is an internationally sought-after thought leader for program improvement and leadership development. She feels her life experiences as a recruiter, educator, administrator, state-level education policy maker, workforce development consultant, and leadership coach have all led to the development of the JAKAPA platform.

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Keara Pringle

ctO

Keara Pringle is an engineer and project manager. She is an agile project management enthusiast that has taken numerous engineering projects from ideation to full commercial release. Keara is passionate about JAKAPA due to her experience working in Corporate America and seeing what poor soft skills can do to team performance. She wants to help businesses develop stronger corporate cultures through better soft skill training and hiring practices.

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Nebula Media Group

Origin: PA | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Acquired

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What is Nebula Media Group?

Nebula Media Group is a full-service website and content accessibility consultancy for small and mid-size businesses. From WCAG to ADA compliance, our ‘accessibility-as-a-service’ platform combines people, technology, processes, and legal expertise to help attain and maintain true accessibility for our clients. Let’s build a more inclusive web, together.

Nebula Media Group was fully acquired by CurbCutOS in February of 2023.

Company Leadership

Will Bubenik

Founder

Will Bubenik is a St. Louis native and has three siblings with intellectual disabilities. Seeing his siblings struggle to use the internet showed him that it wasn’t that his siblings weren’t able to access the world…it was that the world was made inaccessible to them. Nebula was born from that experience. Will is an avid sports fan and a proud Temple University alumni, having professional experience with Special Olympics International and the Philadelphia 76ers. Ask Will about Philly sports!

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Total Orbit

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Total Orbit?

Total Orbit offers turn-key proprietary software WITH services from engagement experts to create personalized digital learning and engagement environments. Each custom-created “orbit” leverages an organization’s existing information and educational tools to create personalized journeys and tracks that engagement down to the individual user level, with system triggers in support of desired outcomes. While the platform and process is widely applicable to various industries and use cases, the core product – CareOrbit – focuses on healthcare in support of patient engagement and education. Orbits are tailored to each patient’s diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan and are delivered via a responsive, device agnostic web app. It’s like a virtual mentor in the palm of their hand for the 99% of the time patients are not directly in front of their care team.

Company Leadership

Michael Margraf

CEO/President

As CEO, Michael is responsible for running all facets of the business. He has spent nearly 20 years leading successful technology startups. Mr. Margraf is an investor and currently serves on the board of a healthcare offering CaringBoost.com. He also actively participates and has served as a technology advisor on the boards of numerous educational foundations for local schools and universities. Michael holds degrees in Business Administration and Sociology from Washington University in St. Louis.

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David P. Scott

Chief Counsel/Director of Operations

David is an experienced C-level executive and attorney with Fortune 500 (DoD) and Global Law Top 50 (law firm) experience. He has co-founded several start-ups, served as CEO and COO of several businesses and serves on the boards of several privately held businesses (MedTech/Defense/Robotics/Media/CleanTech/SaaS). David has lived the entire early stage to hyper-growth experience — launched, landed, raised, crashed, survived, rebounded, grown, and exited. David also runs a high-tech accelerator.

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Jeff Coburn

Chief Strategy/Content Officer

Our engagement expert sat on the global strategy board of one of the largest marketing agencies in the world, charting the path to transforming engagement platforms and thinking, as well as running teams and engagement efforts for clients including Verizon and Microsoft, among many others. Mr. Coburn holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia.

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Be a Part of the Movement

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Equalizer Games

Origin: TX | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is Equalizer Games?

Equalizer games is a sports and education AI software platform that helps athletes improve player IQ through virtual coaching and interactive training: helping athletes improve their game and safety before they ever take the field. This platform allows the coach to speak to the player away from the field through a web portal that provides teaching and tracks assessment of the player’s virtual practice from his or her mobile device. Our communication system increases engagement and allows for training away from school all at the fingertips of the student-athlete.

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Company Leadership

John Tomlinson, Jr.

co-Founder & CEO

Co-Founder and CEO, John has over 27 years of QB coaching experience in high school, college, and the NFL. John’s experience with developing players’ IQ and on-field skills at all levels of football and knowing what triggers the IQ for student-athletes to produce successful results on the field are the ingredients he uses to fuel this product.

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Marcus Matthews

CTO

20+ years of sports game development and entrepreneurship, including development of original NBA 2K and NFL 2K for Sega. He’s our catalyst for technology innovation, development, and communication with our potential software development partners.

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Kathy Tomlinson

co-Founder & president

Co-Founder and President/COO Kathy has over 22+ years of finance and customer service experience. Kathy is helping shape operations of equalizer games as it continues to evolve. She is also the catalyst of building the idea of IQ development for Equalizer Games’ future tools.

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GABA

Origin: GA | Grant Awarded: 2021 | Status: Active

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What is GABA?

GABA’s vision is to empower human connection for the purpose of learning and career development. For students, a lack of career guidance, the cost of support services, and burnout from trying to go it alone kills dreams. Initially an independent consulting firm, GABA is a web and mobile career development platform and peer learning community for over 2,000 students around the world. Our app matches students to peer mentors, tutors, and coaches based on their desired career and learning preference. GABA was awarded the Mountain Dew and BET $1M Real Change Opportunity Fund for its mission to democratize career development and diversify professional fields.

Company Leadership

candice blacknall, md, mba

ceo

Candice S. Blacknall, MD, MBA is a serial entrepreneur and army veteran with a passion for healthcare and education innovation. The thesis of her career has centered around advancing solutions to access and equity. To that end, she has spent the last 4 years leveraging her training as a military leader to coach students and entrepreneurs to career success. Her dedication to career and business development for underrepresented minorities comes from her upbringing in Flint, MI, and her belief that places like her hometown are rich with untapped potential for entrepreneurial innovation.

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sergio munoz

CtO

Former founder, eternal student, 10 years experience understanding business and user needs, thinking about how technology can be at their service

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Involved Industries

Be a Part of the Movement

We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.

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V15ABLE

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2019 | Status: Active

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What is V15ABLE?

V15Able is an online career development platform for people with disabilities and for any employer looking to hire talented, capable candidates. Disabled candidates will finally be empowered to prove their potential to employers through our specialized portfolios designed with cutting edge user experience techniques. Employers will finally have access to the presently untapped potential of the disabled workforce. By simply making disabled candidates “v15able” to employers, In addition to all the support and educational materials V15Able provides for people with disabilities, they will have each other in creating a community. Together their connections, endorsements and recommendations can build confidence and provide much needed support. Additionally, we will be providing employers with curated resources to encourage hiring PWDs, such as tax incentives for hiring disabled workers or educational resources on how to create inclusive workspaces, how to explore alternative work models, and more.

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Company Leadership

Letisha Wexstten

Founder and CEO

I was born without arms and learned how to do everything with my feet. Determined to be independent I focused all my efforts on getting my education, however even with a bachelors degree I still find it difficult to interview for open positions. It was my disability that employers were concerned about and not my capabilities. So I decided to show the world how capable i can be. By starting my YouTube channel tisha Unarmed I began to share with the world that my disability does not define me.

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T-var EdTech

Origin: OH | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is T-var EdTech?

Hundreds of millions of kids around the world aren’t being educated in reading in the way that they need, or deserve. We are going to change that. The Read Read™ is the first device that allows kids to independently learn how to read. Developed at the Harvard Innovation Lab, with engineers from MIT, The Read Read™ is producing game-changing results, especially for kids with special needs. During our 5-month pilot at the Perkins School for the Blind, kids previously classified as ‘non-readers’ were able to learn to read using our device. During our 5-month pilot at the Perkins School for the Blind, kids previously classified as ‘non-readers’ were able to learn to read using our device. We’re seeking to partner with foundations and philanthropists who are interested in early literacy, visual impairments and blindness, dyslexia, and Autism, so that together, we can realize our vision of Literacy For All.

Company Leadership

Alex Tavares

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

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Generation Mindful

Origin: MO | Grant Awarded: 2018 | Status: Active

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What is Generation Mindful?

Generation Mindful (GEN:M) creates tools, toys, and programs that nurture emotional intelligence through play and positive discipline. A direct to consumer e-commerce company, GEN:M enjoys a passionate community of parents, educators, and therapists in more than 45 countries who share in its mission to raise emotionally healthy children. Children aren’t born knowing how to regulate their emotions anymore than they are born knowing how to tie their shoes. GEN:M teaches families and classrooms vital social and emotional skills with products that take the latest findings in brain research and child development practically and playfully into everyday life.

Company Leadership

Suzanne Tucker

Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Suzanne Tucker, PT and long-time educator, founded Generation Mindful based on a need she was seeing in her work teaching positive discipline and mindfulness to hundreds of thousands of parents and early childhood professionals for decades. Suzanne noticed caregivers today were struggling to raise kids differently than they were raised. She saw a need for tangible, play-based, educational tools, toys, and classes to build the emotional intelligence of not only children but the adults raising them — and Generation Mindful, a global, direct-to-consumer e-commerce and lifestyle brand, was born. 

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Mary Houlihan

Chief Operating Officer

Mary Houlihan serves as Chief Operating Officer at Generation Mindful. She provided leadership at Anheuser-Busch, where she oversaw the world-famous Clydesdale Operations, Hospitality Centers, Promotional Products, and Training and Development, and as the Chief Operating Officer for St. Louis Public Schools, leading Operations and Finance for over 70 schools and 25,000 students.

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Involved Industries

Explore All Startups

Be a Part of the Movement

We champion extraordinary entrepreneurs to create positive change – for St. Louis and for the world. Join us by applying to our Global Startup Competition, becoming a financial supporter, volunteering your time or amplifying our message.

LEARN ABOUT THE COMPETITION
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