Our Story

Electives founders, Krikor Dzeronian and Jason Lavender, met at MIT Sloan where, one night, they attended a guest lecture by a mountaineer who climbed Mount Everest six times. They were captivated by the vividness of his explanation on why effective teamwork is the difference between life and death.

After that lecture, Krikor and Jason came together and wondered, “How can we provide more people with that same kind of learning experience? Who are other experts that people could be learning from?”

From that day forward, Jason and Krikor made it their mission to make great learning more accessible by bringing the world’s best experts--both the known and unknown-- into people’s everyday lives at work.

That is when they began to build

Electives

.

Our Mission and Vision

We are building a new kind of Learning and Development (L&D) and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) platform that connects employees to unique instructors - from pro athletes, FBI agents, top professors, social justice advocates and more. We believe great instructors can be life-changing so we help organizations facilitate learning experiences that their employees will never forget.

Electives is backed by top investors, including Accomplice, Boston Seed, Bertelsmann Media, G20 Ventures and Jerod Mayo.

“Electives programs are making workforces stronger, more empathetic, and are helping build diversity and understanding. I’m excited to be involved and delighted to watch them grow.” - Jerod Mayo

“On a mission to change

who

we get to learn from at work and

what

we get to learn at work.”

Electives Culture

Our Team

We're a team of engineers, product experts, designers, educators, and generally passionate people who come to work every day to build learning experiences that employees will love.

Austin Williams

Vice President, Partnerships and Growth

Bianca Kaushal-Carter

Customer Success Manager

Courtney Broderick

Account Executive

Ish Alam

Customer Success Manager

Janelle Gee

Director, Client Engagement

Jason Lavender

Co-Founder & CEO

Kathy Bryan

EVP Head of Marketing

Krikor Dzeronian

Co-Founder & COO

Lou Iordanov

Director, Engineering

Maggie Goldstein

Vice President, Learning Experiences

Monica Noll

Director, Learning Experience

Nate Madel

Director, Product Management

Our Core Values

Since we help drive learning cultures at other organizations, it’s no surprise that culture is extremely important to us. We strive to attract people who:

Embrace Differences

and actively seek as well as respectfully express perspectives; our best learning comes from our differences.

Take ownership,

roll up our sleeves and do something when we see an improvement opportunity.

Are bold

and try new ways of solving old problems. After all, we are trying to change the face of learning in the workplace.

Commit to the best idea

regardless of where it came from. Innovation is more important than tenure or titles.

Have a Growth Mindset.

We are building something new that does not exist; we do not have all the answers, but are confident we can find them.

Play the long game

and don't take shortcuts. We make decisions that build products and relationships for the future.

Have each other's back

and always look for ways to elevate their coworkers. We succeed as a team and we fail as a team.

Want to work with us?

Join us - and help companies create better learning experiences for their employees!

Are you looking to work for a mission-driven company? Are you passionate about learning and development or DE&I? Are you looking for a meaningful challenge and wanting to make a lasting impact? If so, we’d love to meet you. Apply today!

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