Company: Declara, Palo Alto, CA, U.S.A.
Entry Submitted By: Consort Partners
Company Description: Declara, which was co-founded in 2012 by CEO Ramona Pierson, is focused on developing technology for personalized learning. The company’s platform uses semantic search, algorithms and recommendations to develop specific learning paths for individuals, making learning a constant discovery.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Female Entrepreneur of the Year – Business Products –11 to 2,500 Employees

Nomination Title: Ramona Pierson, CEO and Co-founder

Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated entrepreneur since the beginning of July last year (up to 525 words):

Ramona Pierson co-founded Declara in 2012 to focus on developing technology for personalized learning. The company’s platform, which she developed and continues to hone, uses semantic search, algorithms and recommendations to develop specific learning paths for individuals, making learning a constant discovery. Instead of giving every person an identical learning path, the Declara platform surfaces the right content in the right context.

By autumn 2013, Declara had secured more than $5 million in early funding from the likes of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Much of that was because she developed a platform, which she continues to upgrade, that happened to echo her own ability to see patterns and learn from them. As the San Jose Mercury News wrote in December 2013, those qualities lie at the core of the "radical collaboration" engine she created at Declara. Designed initially as a tool to connect educators to information and analysis about how people learn, the software mimics Pierson’s own learning experience, particularly her years in the old folks home where she recovered from a devastating accident that left her in a coma for 18 months. "I think that helped me see these elders as experts," she told the Mercury News, "and that's where the radical collaboration came from."

It has increasingly become a tool that educators have used to “level up” their teaching corps. Since mid-2013, the Declara platform has been adopted by Educational Services Australia network for the country’s teachers to learn new skills as well as to help form a national public school curriculum. ESA’s private social network is designed to link every teacher in the country and allow them to form networks of their own. Other organizations that have since joined with Declara include Bécalos, an organization of Mexico’s Televisa Foundation; Tu clase, tu país in Chile; and SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación), Mexico’s largest teacher’s union, which enlisted Declara to train its 1.6 million teachers and administrators.

Declara’s growth under Pierson’s leadership has paralleled her ability to raise funding. In April 2014, Declara secured $16 million in Series A funding, from a group led by GSV Capital, and an another $9 million in Series A backing from Singapore’s EDBI and Linden Venture Fund based in Chicago, bringing her company’s total Series A funding to $25 million.

In that time, Declara under Pierson’s leadership has established offices in Mexico and Boise, Idaho. Most recently, Declara opened in an office in Singapore, where it is expanding its services into Asia.

Education today does not just stop in grade school, high school or university, as Pierson, who was trained as a neuroscientist, is living proof. Continued learning is where the world is going. Pierson believes it can impact the continued learning landscape for people around the world. Its adoption by numerous business and learning institutions, from the University of Pennsylvania to Genentech, indicate that others agree.

There are several trends that Pierson and Declara are responding to, such as social collaboration, where people reach out to anyone anywhere and share content openly. The adoption of social networks across the globe is fueling this.

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Provide a brief biography of the nominated entrepreneur (up to 125 words):

Ramona Pierson was 22 when she was hit by a drunk driver, which put her in a coma for 18 months and left her blind for 11 years. During her recovery, she was forced to relearn the most basic tasks, from breathing to walking and smiling.

Her recovery directly informed much of her future work, including the development of the learning platform used by her current company Declara (www.declara.com), which builds technology for personalized learning in a way that mirrors the collaborative elements of her recovery.

Ramona’s career started as a neuroscientist at the Palo Alto Brain Center and VA hospitals, which led to her creation of The Source, one of the first online social learning solutions for educators, students and parents.