Meet an Edlio Innovator!

 

In order to improve education technology for K-12 schools, Edlio has always placed innovation and constant improvement at the top of its priorities. The Edlio team works hard to discover the best ways technology can be used to boost learning and engagement in the classroom. This month, we are shining the spotlight on an Edlio team member who works hard to keep Edlio growing! Mete Kural, the Director of Spike Labs, is an innovation rockstar! He explores and executes new projects that advance the mission of Edlio, and recently, he has spent time helping everyone get acquainted with our new CRM, Salesforce. Although he is always busy, Mete took the time to answer some questions for us about his role at Edlio:

What is your favorite thing about Edlio?

I love that Edlio is a social impact venture. Throughout my career I've worked at companies that help big companies increase their revenues, which was all well and fine; however, at Edlio, I started experiencing another level of fulfillment that I was missing at my previous jobs. I can mentally connect the work I do everyday with our mission to improve educational outcomes, and that puts a smile on my face every day.

Your role as Director of Spike Labs is pretty unique. Do you have anything interesting to share about how you came into that role?

The idea for Spike Labs, which is really a project incubator, was cooked up within a short amount of time when Ali and I were brainstorming how I could be of value to the company if I joined. We knew that we had a hard time defining what exactly Labs was going to be, so we decided to keep it rather fluid. In fact, to this day, Spike Labs remains not well-defined and has taken on initiatives that range from exploration of new product ideas all the way to internal needs projects. It will evolve as the diversity of Labs projects varies and will then start taking more shape and a narrower scope.

Do you have any tips for schools/districts trying to integrate new tech into large communities?

My recommendation would be to always put value and people before technology. Love the problem, not the solution. Work with vendors that take understanding their customers’ problems and needs very seriously before implementing solutions, like Edlio. :-)

What are you excited to work on after Salesforce, if you can share?

I’m excited about extending the foundations we’re establishing today with the new internal systems we’re setting up and delivering customer facing capabilities to make direct improvements to our customers’ experience.

Now for a fun one - what did you do for Thanksgiving this year?

After eating a hearty meal we did karaoke, one of my favorite pastimes. For me it’s a time when I can experience in a parallel universe my other dream job of being a rock star. :-)

The whole Edlio team is grateful to have someone who is so passionate about the mission of the company. We’re glad that he chose to work here instead of going on world tour with his mad karaoke skills!