Lisa Mayr is leaving Blackboard to be CFO at EverFi

Lisa Mayr has spent the last 25 years navigating a successful career in tech, and her best advice is to trust yourself when the going gets rough.

“Be authentic to yourself,” Mayr told Technical.ly DC. “Achieving balance is tough and it doesn’t happen at the same time. I was successful because I had a lot of support and I didn’t overthink my decisions.”

Earlier this month, Mayr announced plans to depart as chief financial officer of D.C.–born edtech giant Blackboard, and accept a new position to be the CFO a EverFi, a younger D.C. edtech company.

Mayr, 50, was Blackboard’s treasurer and vice president for finance from 2013 leading up to her promotion to CFO in 2016. Before that, she spent two years as the treasurer at Living Social and Arlington Capital Partners. She has a degree in economics from American University, and a Master’s in business administration from Georgetown University.

We are thrilled to welcome Lisa to EVERFI as our new CFO! #WomeninTech #edtech #dctech https://t.co/qFnRCixFEJ

— EVERFI from Blackbaud (@EVERFI) January 8, 2018

Georgetown-based EverFi has drawn attention for big funding rounds over the last couple of years. The company raised $190 million in 2017, which followed the closing of a $40 million Series C nine months earlier. The company’s platform provides learning that goes beyond the classroom for K-12, including financial literacy, STEM and civics. It also has offerings for higher education and corporate settings.

At 10-year-old EverFi, which is about a decade younger than Blackboard, Mayr will be helping the company to further scale its business model. The company already has 4,3000 partners across the U.S. and Canada.

“How do we make this wonderful platform they have for educational content around social issues, make them a SaaS [software as a service] company that can scale and grow?” Mayr said. “I’m going to help EverFi articulate a multi-year financial model and help them execute on that model to make it a global, scalable SaaS business.”

EverFi CEO Tom Davidson said the company is lucky to have Mayr.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lisa to EverFi,” he said in a statement. “She is recognized as an industry leader in the education space and will help us on this next stage to becoming one of the great software-as-a-service players in the education space.”

Mayr plans to depart Blackboard at the end of the month. The company states Chief Legal Officer Stuart Kupinsky will serve as Interim CFO following her departure.