Company Leadership
Dr. Keith Larick
The Man Behind The Plan
When Dr. Keith Larick was Superintendent of the Tracy Unified School District (TUSD) nearly 20 years ago, he selected three experienced educators and challenged them to take a clean slate approach to designing the optimal K-12 education program, using proven student-centered and organizational best practices. The result was the creation of three charter schools to prove the model. According to Keith:
“The only truly renewable resource we have in our country today is our students. Those young people who attend our elementary, middle, high schools, colleges, and universities are the source of creativity, innovation and invention that will drive our economy and become guardians of our democracy. To thrive and grow they must have a learning environment that provides a foundation of basic skills, is personal, and includes competence in problem solving and application of knowledge to relevant real life problems.
The model developed for the TUSD and tested over more than 10 years has proven successful in addressing personalized learning for students with different learning styles and needs. This model, as adopted by Emaginos Inc., is an important step forward to preparing our young people to be successful in any field of their choosing.”
Allan Jones
The Champion of Change
Emaginos President, Allan Jones, has been working in and around education for over forty years. In the public K-12 system he taught in the classroom, was district chief information and technology officer, and taught college courses for teachers. He also served as a school board member. On the other side, he co-founded an online high school, consulted with school districts on their technology planning, and worked for Digital Equipment Corporation’s Corporate Research division; creating programs to identify and transfer breakthrough valuable ideas from leading universities into the company.
After years of observing the good and the bad in America’s public schools, Allan joined with Keith to transform America’s schools into centers of discovery and innovation. Victor Hugo sums it up best.
An idea before it’s time must wait, for no one is crazy enough to grasp it… at the moment.
And an idea whose time has passed must hope, for a future in which it’ll be needed again.
But an idea whose time has come is a force. It changes the world. It alters reality. It’s unstoppable!
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
- Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885)
Jack Taub
Chief Visionary
Jack Taub was a kid from Brooklyn, New York, who dropped out of school to pursue a passion for stamp collecting. He and his brother Bert Taub, who became a very well respected philatelist, developed a very successful stamp business – at one point having an exclusive contract with the USPS for selling their stamp-collecting materials in every post office across the country. From the earnings of this business, Bert and Jack invested money into an emerging technology that ultimately evolved into one of the very first social networking applications (although that term did not exist then). Bert and Jack had not had good experiences with public education, so they decided to focus their energy on fixing America’s K – 12 public education system. They then teamed up with Dr. Keith Larick to design a new model for education based upon proven best practices. Both Bert and Jack had the vision that an effective school can be built. They were committed to transforming every school in the country to a new model that will allow students to achieve a successful education.