"I think the most important thing about building a team is building a team of people who get it. Whatever getting it means for your business. So for BlogHer, we're about a passionate community and we're about a community that -- we're mission based. We're about creating opportunities for women online, women who blog. And for us, that means that we've hired a lot of people straight from that community. And we've hired people from in our community that have these skills. That's not even how we first met them because they've blogged or they've tweeted or whatever it might be. But they have rich, full lives and other skills and backgrounds." -- Elisa Camahort
In The Trenches
Dennis Littky, Cofounder and codirector of The Big Picture Company, The Met School, and College Unbound.+
Dennis Littky is co-founder and co-director of The Big Picture Company, The Met School and College Unbound. He is nationally known for his extensive work in secondary education in urban, suburban and rural settings, spanning over 40 years. Dr. Littky holds a double Ph.D. in psychology and education from the University of Michigan. His work as a principal at Thayer Junior/Senior High School in Winchester,
NH, was featured in an NBC movie, “A Town Torn Apart”, based on the book, Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School. He published a book, in collaboration with Samantha Grabelle, on The Big Picture’s philosophy entitled, The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business (ASCD, September 2004).
The honors he has received include the 2002 McGraw Hill Prize in Education, The George Lucas’s Daring Dozen in Education Award and the 2006 Innovator of the Year Award, from the Rhode Island Development Corporation.
As a social entrepreneur, Dr. Littky has successfully helped develop an innovative, replicable model for schools that has led to the creation of a network of 75 schools in 20 cities, nationally, and 20 abroad. In addition, Littky and Big Picture were asked to lead the Gates Foundation’s Alternative High School Initiative, for youth at risk of “falling through the cracks” of the present system, most notably high school dropouts. Clayton Christensen author of Disrupting Class says, “Big Picture Learning is a perfect example of a heavyweight team that has redefined—indeed, revolutionized— schooling. Just recently, Dennis founded, a new college program, College Unbound in partnership with Roger Williams University, that challenges the way colleges work with first generation students.
