Neeru Khosla is a firm believer in the power of education. She wants the rigor and accountability of for profit models to apply to non-profits. Neeru is a member of the Board at The Nueva School in Hillsborough, California, where she has served since 1997, caters to gifted and talented students and is internationally recognized. Neeru is also on the Advisory Board of the American India Foundation, a leading international development organization charged with accelerating social and economic change in India. She previously served as a trustee of the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation and Connexions, a Rice University open-source project. Neeru’s commitment to education is evidenced by her role on the National Advisory Board for DonorsChoose, an organization dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials in U.S. public schools. Neeru is one of the founding members of the K-12 Initiative of the D-School (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) at Stanford University and a member of the committee to expand the program. Neeru is currently the Co-Founder and Executive Director of CK-12 Foundation. CK-12 is a non-profit organization launched in 2006, which aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide.

Neeru holds a Bachelors degree from Delhi University/San Jose State, a Masters degree in Molecular Biology from San Jose State, and a Masters in Education from Stanford University.

Murugan Pal a serial entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, Bay Area, USA. Murugan is currently the Co-Founder & President of CK-12 Foundation. CK-12 is a non-profit organization launched in 2006, that aims to reduce the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market both in the US and worldwide. Prior to CK-12, Murugan had a brief tenure with Foundation Capital as Entrepreneur-In-Residence. Previously, Murugan was the founder and CTO of SpikeSource. Before founding SpikeSource, Pal was an entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Previously, he was a Founding Engineer of e-business software company Asera, Inc. Before Asera, Pal was a principal developer at Oracle Corporation in the Application Server division and was part of the company’s early XML initiatives. Prior to Oracle, he was one of the lead developers of Versant Corporations Object Database. Pal has worked on real-time enterprise technologies, composite applications, service-oriented architecture runtimes, relational databases, object databases, and robotics and manufacturing automation.

Pal holds a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Thiagarajar College of Engineering, affiliated to Madurai University in India, a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University, a Masters in Computer Science from Arizona State University, and was a Doctoral Candidate in Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University.

Kathleen Bakshi enjoys the entrepreneurial spirit of CK-12. After fifteen years in the biotech and high tech worlds, it is refreshing to be involved in an organization dedicated to making textbooks available to all.

Annamaria Farbizio has over 25 years experience in educational publishing with a specialization in middle school and secondary mathematics. After teaching high school for three years, she self-published her own series of math textbooks before joining Charles E. Merrill Publishing as an assistant editor. She worked on best-selling textbooks in both the secondary and college divisions. In the late 80s she joined Addison-Wesley Publishing as a product manager for Secondary Mathematics and Computer Science. She and her husband have been printing and publishing entrepreneurs since 1987. Annamaria joined the staff of CK-12 in the fall of 2008 and is very excited about participating in the development of a world-class Open Source curriculum.

Gil Hoskins has developed and managed instructional and publishing systems for schools, government agencies, publishers, and non-profit organizations through several generational shifts in technology. He has edited single titles and multiple series for middle and high school mathematics, including alternative integrated material. He has advised major educational publishers in content development for math, science, and social studies, produced ancillary print components, and tested systems for post-publication correlation automation. Since its founding, Gil has outlined many of CK-12’s seed titles for its sequence of open-source math and science courses. As a California native with Gold Rush roots, he is very pleased to be here in Palo Alto with another team of pioneers, coordinating curriculum alignment for CK-12, whether by state, national, common, or shared content standards, as FlexBooks begin to reach out and meet the needs of students, educators, schools and homes throughout the country and around the world.

Purdue University graduate in the field of Psychology in Human-Computer Interaction. Steve is here to help CK-12 achieve useable and creative user interface for the masses, hoping to make a difference in the education world.

Ezra believes in Open Source Software, and tends to gravitate to work for open projects. He graduated from Penn State University studying Theoretical Computer Science, where he failed to maintain a 4.0 GPA. He grew up in Semarang, Central Java – Indonesia. He now demands his daily cup of Java, speaks Javanese, barely writes Java code, but still kinda stinks when it comes to Javascript. He plays a few musical instruments, plays badminton, cooks, and writes cheesy things on his blog.

Juli Weiss is CK12′s Science Leader and Editor. Trained in biochemistry and biophysics, she formerly served as director of clinical research in a university setting. She has spent the last two decades in the non-profit sector in various leadership positions and non-profit boards. She previously served as executive director of the Pacific Vascular Research Foundation; principal partner of Scientific Solutions; co-founder, president, and executive director of California Summer Music; and program officer of the Koret Foundation. She currently serves on the Nueva School Board of Trustees, the Del Sol Performing Arts Organization Board of Directors; Phillips Academy Andover Parent Fund; and the Cate School Fund. She is delighted to be a part of CK12′s vision and mission, transforming education by creating a new paradigm for accessing knowledge as well as trailblazing in Open Source. She is hopeful CK12′s work will inform public policy and advocacy.