125: Beyond the Bell with Dr. Lauren Sanchez Gilbert, CEO of BellXcel

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone and welcome to another fantastic episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and I'm your host and we are super stoked today because we have a fabulous guest with us. We have Dr. Lauren Sanchez Gobert, and she's the CEO of Bell Xcel, welcome on into the show.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (00:27):

Hey Holly, thank you so much for having me here. I feel like after that I need to say what up or something.

Holly Owens (00:33):

How's it going? What you up to? What you been doing today? How's your day? Yeah, absolutely. Well, we are super excited to talk to you and get into all things Bell Xcel, but before we do that, we want to know a little bit about you. So tell us about your journey into this EdTech space, where you started, how you got here, how you became CEO of Bell Xcel.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (00:53):

Sure. So I actually started out as a special education teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think it's just a testament, you can have career changes at any point in your life. I always wanted to stay in the education space, but really thinking about it a little bit differently. And it wasn't until I was 40, I think, almost exactly when I moved over and started to think about education from just a different lens and different angle on how can we meet the needs of the children's and the adults that serve them through a different vehicle, but bring all those years of experience as an administrator with me and having that in-depth understanding of what it's like to be boots on the ground in a classroom as an administrator to the ed tech space so that we could maybe look at it just a little bit differently.

Holly Owens (01:40):

So Nadia and myself are both former educators and we understand that we transitioned out as well. We did it before it was cool. We know that everybody's doing now, so that's great that you have that insider perspective. I really feel that adds a lot of value to especially an ed tech company and coming in and providing that to your client base.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (02:02):

Definitely. And we are a little bit different than your average ed tech because we serve the out of school time area. It's the one thing about the definition of ed tech is that it can be a little bit narrow. And so we're hoping that we can expand that because we know that where children learn isn't just in the classroom, it's everywhere. And so how do we really take education technology and expand it so we can collectively rethink and define be piece of it education writ large.

Holly Owens (02:30):

Yeah. So let's go more into that. We definitely want to have a better understanding. How do you define ed tech and being in the space, being in the classroom now, being a CEO of a company, how would you define educational technology?

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (02:44):

Yeah, I'd say it's the way to enhance how and where and when children learn. So our software is actually a management system along with curriculum for the out of school time space. So when you think of at tech, people almost always go to kind of in the classroom curriculum-based type of entities where we actually have a management system of how do you think about education a little bit broader. Education just doesn't happen. It happens inside of a school that has operational norms, that has a lot of business aspects to it that you have to think about and manage. And we know that schools better manage really well, kids do better in. And so we want to take that same kind of principle and thinking and apply that to out of school time by giving them management tools and resources, the curriculum. So it's really easy to implement ways to measure it, and if they need to add payments or something like that, it's right there for them too. So we really see ourselves as tech, if you've heard that term yet, where it's kind of like tech but slightly outside, but also deeply ingrained in this concept of really expanding the way that we think about education in totality.

Holly Owens (03:52):

And I feel like Covid kind of made that happen too, is just to think outside the walls of the classroom and putting into perspective what really is EdTech or what is an online learning experience or an outside the classroom learning experience, high flex, hybrid, all those different kinds of terms people were trying to understand and define during the pandemic. So how has that maybe impacted a little bit of what you do or your perspective in a post covid world for Bell Xcel?

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (04:24):

It definitely, I think what we were striving to do, that whole piece of trying to push people to think a little differently, it kind of catapulted a little bit because it automatically forces all of us to think differently. Think differently about technology and how is it that adults use that to interact with children. And so for us it was if there's a silver lining to something, it did actually open up the way that people view education and especially outside of the classroom walls. And then I think it also helped us realize the impact of extracurriculars in general where kids were denied a lot of these activities and their return back to school has just been extraordinarily difficult. And the removal of the sports and arts and all of those pieces, I think opened up people's eyes to the importance of what happens outside of school and how important what we call supplementary in our minds, it's not supplements required.

Holly Owens (05:22):

Yeah, absolutely. And those extracurriculars and doing different things and kind of enhancing what happens outside the classroom. So let's talk about Bell Xcel. Give us all the details about what it is, tell the audience who hasn't heard of it. Give us everything and let us know what you do For educational institutions. We are super interested and ready to learn. So

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (05:46):

Bell is actually an umbrella to three different entities. So one of 'em is broing Center for Research and Innovation, which is a consulting and obviously research group. Another one is Rise, which is a group where we bring together leaders in the out of school time space for two year cohort where they can learn and grow with each other and learn from each other. But the third one is our biggest, which is Arley, and that's our software. That's the tech piece where we took 30 years of research on how to operate and implement out of school time. What kind of curriculums function well in that environment considering that if you have a teacher that's a huge plus and bonus, but often it is your second tier educators at that point, so what do you need to give them to be effective? So it's very tuned to that space. And then it creates measures so that those programs can talk about how well they're doing, but it's all research based, so it's all based on the science behind it, on what creates high quality. And we use the school day as the measure. So we've done a lot of third party studies to say, is this moving the needle when those kids return to the classroom, which is the ultimate measure graduation? That's the ultimate measure.

Holly Owens (06:56):

I think that I love the fact that it's research based and that you're taking that into consideration because I feel like a lot of the times people will just kind of throw things out there with the assumptions or the holistic perspective about this might work here or this might be a resolution for this, but it really, nowadays you really need the research to back it up. So can you tell us a little bit about how you do that research and maybe some of the studies and things that you've seen over the past 30 years?

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (07:25):

Sure. So we approach it in two ways. One, we do our ongoing research. We have our research team and we do, if it's an academic based program, we do pre and post measures. We look at attendance and what influences that. And then do we do a lot of surveying? So we partnered with Harvard and really thought through what kind of questions should you be asking our parents and caregivers along with the staff and the students that will lead to quality indicators within the program itself. So we do that every year for every program on an ongoing basis. And each partner gets a report so that they can understand how they're doing, report that to the families, it's good marketing material, et cetera. I mean, we all sit there and say, my child, I put my child in field hockey and we want teamwork. Oh, I love you said field hockey. I played field hockey in high school. I love that. It is an awesome sport.

Holly Owens (08:16):

It is,

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (08:18):

Right? And so all these things that you say that it's going to do for your child, of course you want them to be involved and all that, but you want 'em. And for all these teamwork and this, imagine actually measuring that and saying, let's see if it's really having the impact. Are there ways we can improve? That's what some of the system does. So we do that ongoing, but we don't just trust that the gold standards to have a third party come in and say, let's validate if what you're doing is really affecting the young people and the adults in the way that you are saying. So we partner repeatedly with Rand or other big third party research entities, universities, et cetera, to really check and say, yes, that is actually having the impact. And we look at the, we call scholars, the students themselves or the participants themselves, but we also look at the adults. One of the biggest studies we did was on professional development and does the out of school time environment provide teachers with a solid professional development opportunity almost in an experimental way, experiential, excuse me, only study of its kind. It showed that that type of person of professional development had greater effects on teachers than all the other types, which is so interesting. Wow, That is

Holly Owens (09:26):

Super interesting. Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that I noticed when I was going through your site is that this idea through the school and the partnerships and all the different organizations you work with, also to the parent involvement, I think as students grow and mature, the parent involvement gets less and less, but making this a community effort and really having the research to back that up, I think that's so important for students as they continue to grow and learn and learning to do things outside of school or getting involved in camps and organizations. And just because as adults, we know that professional development is important, but it's also too, it's important to volunteer in the community and help our local communities. So it really opens that up for the parents to influence the kids and to be a part of that experience as well.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (10:20):

Yes. And sometimes the hours just make it easier for parents to be families, to be involved in their child's life in some ways. So it gives that opportunity. And then we were both in schools for a very long time. The pressure there is different for families, different for the students, different for the administrators. This can sometimes lend itself to assist in thereby creating an opportunity that has less pressure and less potential consequences to everyone involved. And so it just sometimes can make it a safer place for everyone to interact a little bit differently.

Holly Owens (10:52):

Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk to us a little bit about who you partner with and some of the organizations that you work with? I saw some pretty popular ones on your site, so can you talk about how you form those and what those entail?

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (11:05):

Sure. So we partner with anyone despite of any size who is serving children outside the school day. So I should begin with that. So you've got some ice skating clubs and churches and very small, more mom and pop kind of organizations along with the big brand names like the YMCAs, all kinds of school districts, boys and Girls Club, four H libraries, things that are a little bit bigger, name parks and rec organizations. But our true belief is that it is really going towards anyone who is serving children in out of school time. That was one of our big drivers of mine personally because I grew up in New Mexico and my family's from a rural area and they get often left out because they don't have a critical mass of funding or children or anything. And I kept saying, that's got to be the test. If where I grew up fits here, then I think we have arrived because when we say all children, we mean all. And so

Holly Owens (12:05):

Make

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (12:05):

Sure what we're building does actually meet that criteria.

Holly Owens (12:09):

Yeah, I love that you open it up to everybody in that you partner, because I know sometimes organizations will be like, we're just focused on this narrow piece, this one area here. And I myself too grew up in a rural area and I didn't notice until I got the college, which was probably not good for the academics or the organizations that I participated in, what was really out there. You got exposure to the career center, the study abroad programs and things like that. And I feel like these kinds of organizations kind of prep you for those situations and being aware of more aware of the world and your surroundings and what exists there. Because oftentimes when you do grow up in those rural areas, you just don't know. You don't know what you don't know. Right,

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (12:58):

Exactly. I remember I was meeting with a partner and they were rural Louisiana, and the kids were all excited about a field trip and I'm like, where are you going? You know where they were going, a library because the nearest library was like 45 minutes away.

Holly Owens (13:12):

They

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (13:13):

Been, and it's just those type of moments where you really realize, like we do in our curriculum, we have built in virtual field trips, for example, and all these activities to try to bring them there a little bit. But you forget, especially when you're in where we're at Boston or something like that, you have just such a different worldview that you can't apply to everyone equally. And taking into that moment of this child, the nearest library is 45 minutes, it's a long bus ride, and how do we open up their world to see things and open the world to those that are living in Boston or New York City, et cetera, to also understand a world that they don't know.

Holly Owens (13:53):

Yeah, absolutely. I just think about growing up in the rural area, but then I also, when I was older, I went and lived in New York for a bit in community to Manhattan. So culture shock for the rural person, but you don't realize from both perspectives. I love the rural aspect, but I also love some of the city aspects. So you kind of get that, marry those two together and those things that a lot of them things overlap and having people talking to each other from different places, I just can't imagine the community that's being built for the participants.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (14:29):

Exactly. Giving educators, when we do some of our group webinars, have an opportunity to be in a session with somebody that is from rural Louisiana and someone who's from the Bronx and narrow the differences you have more like the not and

Holly Owens (14:47):

From

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (14:47):

Each other and bring various ideas to the table.

Holly Owens (14:51):

Yeah, 100%. And tools like this and experiences like this really do do that, and we need more of that. So we've said a lot, and I could probably most definitely ask a lot more questions about research and other things. But as we're coming up here on the end of the episode, I want to see if there's anything that you can share that is in maybe development, don't violate any NDA agreements, anything about the future of Bell Xcel that you're looking forward to that you want to share with the audience.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (15:26):

Sure. We have a robust roadmap this year. It's a really exciting one. We're hoping to create a far more robust payment system, as much as that may seem like get this operational piece. It ends up being kind of a key driver for many of our partners that need more backend management or different flexibility. So really excited about that. And then from a in content point of view, we are developing a fitness program right now that we're actually going to have live videos and actually some former Olympians that are actually going to be some of the demonstrators. Cool. Yeah, so really excited about that. I think it's filming as we speak, oddly in Canada, but

Holly Owens (16:05):

Little chilly,

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (16:07):

Right? So excited about that to have that opportunity. We have a lot of STEM activities, but then looking forward to developing arts, et cetera, to really open up and have a very easy way for people to implement those other extracurricular along with all the academics that we have too.

Holly Owens (16:27):

Fantastic. And we love you to come back and say, where are they now? And tell us all the things that you went up to and what maybe share who the Olympians were at that point.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (16:37):

I know, But I They're either actually. Yeah,

Holly Owens (16:40):

Guess who they were. Yeah, no, that's really cool. And I really love the fact that on the roadmap that you have that situation where you're doing STEM stuff. Also too, I think about now that we've had Covid, this is what we need, we need to sustain this sort of situation, we don't need to go back. I think about the criticism that schools and institutions got because of emergency remote teaching, which really wasn't online learning. People don't understand the difference, but programs like this can really help sustain keeping things going and making sure that people are still progressing and they can still connect with each other.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (17:25):

Absolutely. And I love that we are able to connect the operating side, which often gets forgotten in this space. And when you think about when you were in school, you're teaching and so on, how much that actually matters and influences kid outcomes, and it's been a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to take that administrative side I love and pair it with the instructional lead that I also have so much deep passion about and marry 'em together in one place has just been a life dream.

Holly Owens (17:54):

Yeah, absolutely. Whatcha talking About

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (17:56):

Here?

Holly Owens (17:56):

Yeah, I won't say too much about it, but sports I feel like changed my life. I feel like I wouldn't have with the sports and the extracurriculars, I wouldn't be the person I am today without that.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (18:09):

Wholeheartedly agree. And when you talk to most adults, they often will bring up those kind of experiences a little less so than the others. So we shouldn't be discounting when we're thinking of trajectories of their lives.

Holly Owens (18:21):

Absolutely. Well, we have our final two questions, so we want to know if there's anything we missed, anything else you want to share with the audience about Bell Xcel, and then we want you to put on your fortune tellers hat and tell us what the future of education ed tech looks like. So anything else you want to share with the audience and then tell us about the future.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (18:44):

Got to talk about the roadmap, which is really exciting. We're going to have even more to come and continue to expand our reach on the operating side, expand our reach on the curriculum side, but we're doing a lot with communications. We have a communication app as well, and expanding that to be more robust and have more languages and being able to open up opportunities for other families to come in because of that. So really excited about that. And where do I see ed tech going? I think the same place that education going, which is where we're continually going to be challenged to think broader and differently with the introduction of AI into our universe. We're just barely understanding that and how that's going to get interwoven into our reality, into our world. But I think it's going to force us in a good way to think more broadly on that definition of who, where, when, and how children learn and how do we harness that to take us to the future instead of holding back and saying, no AI in the room, no AI doing this. I

Holly Owens (19:43):

Know, So

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (19:44):

Let's embrace it. Let's run with it. Let's use it to enhance these young people, to propel them to a level that we could never even imagine. Yeah,

Holly Owens (19:54):

I 100% agree with you. I embrace it. I think about the diffusion of innovation theory and there's the Luddites at one end, and then there's the people who like ourselves, who are the forward minded thinkers that just grab onto it, embrace it, and run with it. So 100%, let's do it.

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (20:12):

Agreed. It's coming anyway, so we might as well. Yeah, you might as well. Yeah. We're going to be the dinosaurs in the room

Holly Owens (20:19):

Sooner than we think. So we definitely need to embrace this and learn it so that we can continue to contribute to this sector,

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (20:28):

Our jobs, prepare them for this future, so we know it's going to be there. So let's start repairing them now.

Holly Owens (20:35):

Yeah, 100%. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing about yourself and your experiences and about Bell Xcel. We will definitely include everything in the show notes about where to find you, where to find out about Bell Xcel and all your great programs. So we can't thank you enough for what you're doing in this space, and we absolutely enjoyed having you here,

Lauren Sanchez Gilbert (20:55):

Holly. It was great to be here and just love the conversation and look forward to one where we can tell you about how great we're doing in the future. Sounds

Holly Owens (21:03):

Great.