Power Moves: Meet Carnegie Learning’s new chief revenue officer

Carnegie Learning hired a new chief revenue officer

At the beginning of the month, Carnegie Learning announced that it’d brought on Chris Hendrick to work as the Downtown Pittsburgh-based company’s first-ever chief revenue officer. Hendrick comes to the education technology provider with a far-reaching background and nearly 30 years of experience in K-12 education-related sales and revenue management. Some of the most familiar names on Hendrick’s resume include Scholastic, where he served as the publishing company’s senior VP of sales. Before that, he held a series of sales positions at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Cambium Learning, a Boston-based education technology company and a Texas-based education software company, respectively.

Carnegie Learning’s leadership said in the announcement that the creation of the chief revenue officer role signifies the company’s growth, as well as that they believe Hendrick’s background positions him to ensure that growth continues.

“In his role, Chris will be responsible for developing and executing our revenue strategy, overseeing all revenue-generating activities, and ensuring that we continue to grow and thrive in the dynamic and exciting edtech market,” CEO Barry Malkin said. “With his breadth and depth of experience — from classroom teacher to highly-successful sales leader — Chris will accelerate our positive impact across more and more school districts.”

The University of Pittsburgh establishes a quantum physics hub

Roughly a decade ago, the University of Pittsburgh launched the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute, which operates as a collaboration between faculty members from Carnegie Mellon University, Duquesne University and Pitt. Now, to double down on its commitment to quantum technology leadership, the university’s using an $11.6 million loan from its Strategic Advancement Fund to establish what will be called the Western Pennsylvania Quantum Information Core.

Previously, the University of Pittsburgh was already one of the first universities in the country to offer undergraduate degrees in the field. This new center will provide a space where students, researchers and industry partners can form a stronger quantum information science and engineering discipline.

“The core is a natural progression for Pitt, which has been dedicated to cutting-edge quantum information science and engineering research,” said Rob Cunningham, vice chancellor for research infrastructure. “This is the natural next step.”

Ansys makes an acquisition

While Carnegie Learning expanded its staff, Ansys absorbed a new company. As of this month, the Canonsburg-based simulation software company has added Diakopto to enable the company to use Ansys’s existing solutions while helping designers detect problems earlier in the design flow. An announcement also said that Ansys, with Diakopto’s technology at its disposal, can better deliver a competitive edge to engineers using Ansys to create high-performance integrated circuits. According to Ansys Senior VP of Products Shane Emswiler, the technology from both Ansys and Diakopto will ultimately complement each other and create better outcomes for their respective customers.

“Incorporating Diakopto’s unique methodology will support designers using Ansys to quickly and easily pinpoint the few elements, out of billions, causing bottlenecks,” Emswiler said. “The acquisition will complement Ansys’ existing offerings for engineers at every level as Diakopto’s intuitive and out-of-the-box experience doesn’t require extensive training or complicated setups or configurations.”

While few financial details were disclosed in the announcement, the transaction is expected to close at the end of Q2 2023.