Minerva Project Announces New Senior Team to Lead it into its Second Decade of Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, July 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Minerva Project unveiled its new leadership team set to start on July 1st, as the company moves into its second decade. Noah Pickus takes charge as Chief Academic Officer;  Brian Fields as Chief Platform Officer; and Eve Wachtell as Senior Advisor and Acting Chief Operating Officer. The organization is still conducting a search to fill the position of Chief Business Officer, to complement the Senior Team led by Ben Nelson, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

"This is an exciting time for Minerva Project, as it enters its second decade. In the first years, we built our path breaking curriculum and developed the Fully Active Learning pedagogy, delivered on our proprietary platform, Forum^TM. These were the foundation of Minerva Schools at KGI which has now graduated three undergraduate and graduate classes with outstanding student outcomes in terms of learning and employment," said Nelson. "In the last two years, we have partnered with over 20 academic and corporate partners, from nine countries across five continents, who have implemented the Minerva philosophy and who are witnessing similar learning outcomes with their own students. This stellar new Senior Team will help scale the impact Minerva has globally as we continue to grow partnerships, and ensure we keep innovating academically, technologically and commercially."

Pickus will be in charge of leading a dedicated organization devoted to advancing Minerva Project's academic offerings through partnerships with the high school, higher education and professional learning sectors. He was formerly Associate Provost at Duke University where he spent 25 years, and Dean of Undergraduate Curricular Affairs at Duke Kunshan University (DKU) in China. At Duke, he most recently co-authored the university's strategic plan and focused on cross-university initiatives and academic innovations. At DKU, he led the design of the curriculum and faculty hiring. Pickus was previously the Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and the founding director of the Institute for Emerging Issues under former Governor James B. Hunt Jr. at NC State University. His newest book (with Bryan Penprase), Start Up U: Stories from 21st Century Colleges and Universities is under contract with Princeton University Press. Pickus holds a Ph.D in Politics from Princeton University.

Fields will lead the product team in charge of Minerva Project's proprietary virtual learning platform, Forum. He joined Minerva in 2013 and played a crucial role in the development of Forum, enabling its scalability and performance improvements. Prior to Minerva, he specialized in the field of computer architecture, researching ways to improve the performance of general purpose microprocessors. He was a computer architect at Digital Equipment Corporation, Compaq, and NVIDIA; and his Ph.D. thesis won the test-of-time Influential Paper Award from the International Symposium on Computer Architecture 15 years after its publication. Fields holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Wachtell will be in charge of setting up operations strategy and infrastructure, including finance, legal and people operations. Previously, she was Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel at Altitude Learning, where she focused on strategic planning, developing corporate structures, and finance and legal policy, as well as executing three rounds of financing and multiple M&A transactions. Before Altitude Learning, she was a corporate lawyer at Hogan Lovells, Director of the Diane Abbey Law Center at New York Law School, and a teacher in West Philadelphia. She is Treasurer of the ACLU of New York and has served on its Board of Directors since 2011.

Minerva Project was founded in 2011 and launched Minerva Schools at KGI in 2013. Since, it has licensed its curriculum, pedagogical methodologies, and technology to universities and corporations. It launched Minerva Baccalaureate in collaboration with Minerva Institute in 2020, enabling high schools to benefit from the Minerva methodology.

Minerva's partnerships are wide-ranging, spanning curricular design, pedagogical and program licensing, to co-creating colleges and universities from scratch. Its most prominent partners include: 

• University partners: ESADE School of Business (Spain), University to be named in partnership with KAFA (Korea), Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USA), Paul Quinn College (USA), IE University (Spain), Davidson College (USA) and Zayed University (UAE).
• High school and gap year partners: The American School of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), Beyond Dream Global Leaders School (Korea), Elite Open Schools network (U.S. Canada, China, Korea, Indonesia, Japan), GIA Micro School (Korea), Global Citizen Year (USA), Senegalese American Bilingual School (Senegal), Singapore Intercultural School (Korea), and Stanza International Academy (USA).
• Professional learning partners: Barna Management School (Dominican Republic), Berkeley School of Law (USA), Recruit (Japan) LG Electronics (South Korea), Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan (USA), and SK Group (South Korea).

About Minerva Project
Minerva Project is a pathbreaking educational innovator, designing and delivering top-tier educational programs through educational and corporate partners globally.

Founded by Ben Nelson in 2011, Minerva's mission is to nurture critical wisdom for the sake of the world. Building upon the best traditions of liberal arts and sciences education, Minerva is committed to preparing global leaders and innovators for the complexities of the twenty-first century. Its groundbreaking creation of a new university program, the Minerva Schools at KGI, is detailed in the book Building the Intentional University: Minerva and the Future of Higher Education (MIT Press).

For additional information about Minerva Project, visit www.minervaproject.com

For media queries, contact:
Diana El-Azar
Senior Director, Strategic Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE Minerva Project