Michael Chasen, CEO and co-founder of Blackboard, surprised more than a few people this week by announcing his departure from the company, says Christopher Dawson for ZDNet Education. According to the Washington Post, Chasen said the decision to depart was reached amicably and that he was ready to pursue new opportunities after 15 years in a high-demand job. Will that next step be part of another start-up or another large firm? Either is an option, he said.
Chasen is only a couple years older than I am and has three kids. It’s not unreasonable that he might want to slow things down a bit, particularly after a tumultuous year of acquisitions and increasing competition in the enterprise LMS market. After the company’s purchase by Providence Equity Partners for a cool $1.6 billion and change last October, Chasen agreed to stay on as CEO for at least a year. It’s been a year and now the CEO of a mutlibillion dollar technology company (Jay Bhatt, CEO of Progress Software and formerly of Autodesk) has been tapped to fill his shoes…
- ‘Buyer’s remorse’ dogging Common Core rollout - October 30, 2014
- Calif. law targets social media monitoring of students - October 2, 2014
- Elementary world language instruction - September 25, 2014
