Faculty
David Blake
David Blake has spent his career innovating education.
David is the CEO of Learn In and the CEO of BookClub. Learn In helps companies match their employees to the best training programs to develop hard-to-fill job roles and key skills and provide innovative financing options. BookClub is author-led virtual book clubs.
David is also the co-founder and continues to serve as the Executive Chairman of Degreed. Millions of individuals and a majority of the world’s largest companies use Degreed’s platform to discover and answer for all of their learning and skills. Clients range from Boeing and NASA JPL, General Mills & Unilever, CITI and Bank of America, VISA and MasterCard, eBay and Airbnb, to Cisco and Intel.
Prior to Degreed, he helped launch a competency-based, accredited university and was a founding team member of university-admissions startup Zinch (acquired by NASDQ: CHGG). David participated as a EdTech Fellow in a program run by Stanford d.School EdTech Lab, sponsored by Teach For America and NewSchools Venture Fund.
He is the co-author of the book, The Expertise Economy: How the smartest companies use learning to engage, compete, and succeed.
Mikel Blake
Mikel Blake, a lifelong learner, studied political science and economics at Brigham Young University. As a young mother she navigated full-time child rearing and later re-entered the workforce as a self-taught web developer.
While learning web development, Mikel was desperate for a community of support. After working 5-years as a developer at Degreed she co-founded Tech-moms to provide that community of support to other women in Utah and beyond. It’s Mikel's mission to make tech careers accessible to all.
Benjamin "Pete" Allred
Pete taught in the public school system for over 6 years. In that time, he learned many great lessons about how to connect with and challenge students; but he also learned that there is a better way to educate.
Books that have shaped Pete's educational philosophy include: One World Schoolhouse, Creating Innovators, Last Child in the Woods, The Tao Te Ching, A Thomas Jefferson Education, Dumbing us Down, and Uncle Tom's Cabin (not one that you expected, was it).
Outside of education, Pete's passions include high adventure, gardening, strategy games, and puzzles of all kinds.
Mikell Beus
Mikell Beus studied at Snow College where she received her associates of science and later finished her degree at Western Governors University in math education. She worked at a charter school where she implemented personalized learning and mastery. Learning new things is one of her greatest joys in life. This love has led her to quilting, mountain biking, playing the guitar, and snowboarding.