About Helios Ed

OUR MISSION

WHAT WE DO

WHY CHOOSE US

Our mission is to enable our schools to stay efficient and compliant while saving resources that can be redirected to student learning. We believe in a fruitful partnership with schools – a long-lasting relationship that places importance on the success of our partners.

We value modesty, relationships, and trust and are always learning from our users, partners, and staff to deliver the best possible experience to the schools we work with.

Designed especially for K-12, Helios streamlines HR and Business processes and helps schools go paperless to be efficient. Helios makes your life easier by minimizing the risks of compliance and streamlining your processes.

Schools spend $11.7 billion every year on general administration and compliance alone. Helios helps reduce overhead and increases productivity as well as helps keep schools in compliance.

Helios is a fully integrated yet easy to use solution that talks to your existing systems and adds value on top of your HRIS, Payroll, and Financial ERP systems.

We have a team that’s experienced in education and are here to support your needs effectively. You too can choose to join other happy administrators already benefiting from Helios.

How Helios came into being

 

The developers of Helios have experienced the facets and problems with district administration first hand. The Helios team concluded that mandatory as well as administrative requirements keep district administrators working on NCLB and numerous reports; principals need information for creating staff rosters and assignments while HR staff scramble to provide all these data and reports to administrators.

The scramble has in part been due to requirements laid out by NCLB, the Williams legislation, and the reports mandated by the county. In addition, it is necessary to keep track of teachers and staff in order to use this information to make decisions efficiently.

There has been a perceptible inadequacy in the current systems to track information on human resources. The student information systems in vogue can tell schools something about the students but nothing about how to make these students improve their performance. This student improvement can come about by planning effectively based on the right information about the teachers and paraprofessionals. There has been an urgent need for a comprehensive tool that principals could use to make decisions about staff assignments or track their teachers’ highly qualified status.

Team Helios was thus highly motivated to usher in a dedicated research project that led to a comprehensive system to fill this void. It is a system that could help administrators make decisions – decisions that would directly impact student performance, and it creates reports that would help them meet NCLB and other requirements.

The ability to meet with these requirements by using software tools greatly reduces the burden on administrators, leaving them with even more space and enthusiasm to improve student achievement. End result: students benefit and schools progress.

Helios has been created by a team of professionals from school districts for the entire K-12 HR community. Our leadership is comprised of technology managers, HR administrators, credential analysts and business advisors. Naturally, our team brings expertise in the latest tools in the K-12 industry and a solid understanding of the fundamentals involved in school district administration. We partner with leaders in the educational technology industry as well as with organizations that support education.

Board of Advisors

Our advisors have been instrumental in shaping Helios and contributing to our business and product strengths. They have not only been our advisors but our guides, mentors and inspirational forces. We would like to thank them and many more who have helped build and grow Helios.

Ron Chandler

Ron has many years of experience in corporate strategy, technology strategic planning and program management across various industries.

He is currently the CIO for the UCLA – Anderson School of Management. An Intel Corporation Education Accelerator and GSVLabs Mentor, Ron is an established advisor to the technology community. He was recently a Senior Advisor to Clever, one of the fastest growing EdTech companies in the industry. Prior to that he was the CIO of the second largest K-12 HR computing enterprise in the US with a staff of approximately 700 FTE’s and a $500M budget.

Ron was the Chief Technology Officer at Oakland Unified School District before LAUSD and concurrently was the founding Managing Principal of NMA Consulting. His previous posts include SVP & CIO at Irwin Union Bank and various management roles leading technology and strategic change client engagements at Accenture and Price Waterhouse Coopers.

An electrical engineer by trade, Ron managed design teams in the aerospace industry in his previous life.

Ron holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern University and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Dr. S. Mahn

Dr. Mahn is an experienced educator and has taught economics, finance and capital market subjects at the university level. Dr. Mahn’s doctorate degree in Portfolio Management is based on the work of Nobel laureates William Sharpe and Harry Markowitz. He has been a consultant to several companies including Merill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and other banks and institutions. He brings to Helios the same insight and mentoring to help shape our vision and organization.

Dr. Mahn is experienced in mathematical and analytical tools in designing, formulating and conducting meaningful research studies.

Harmeet Singh

Harmeet Singh serves as Credential Counselor and Graduate Advisor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked in various capacities at UCLA, including leading the Teach LA and Teach Compton programs. She has expertise in the areas of credentialing, graduate admissions, recruitment, and academic advising.

Harmeet has several years of experience working with teaching and services credentials in California, and she is also a member of the Credential Counselors and Analysts of California. She brings to Helios a strong knowledge base about teacher credentials, education, and compliance.

Harmeet has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics, and a Master’s degree in Student Affairs from UCLA

Joanna Riley Weidenmiller

Joanna Riley Weidenmiller is the CEO of The One-Page Company and is responsible for executing the company’s strategic development plan. Joanna brings a proven executive management track record and is recognized as a leader in marketing and strategic partnerships across the consumer and technology sectors. Joanna has helped shape design and expansion for Helios.

Prior to launching One-Page, Joanna was Chief Executive Officer of Performance Advertising, responsible for building one of the nation’s leading outsourced sales and marketing firms for two Fortune 500 companies. Taking her expertise overseas to Asia, Joanna developed and executed marketing strategies in the mobile and technology fields; across industry from e-commerce to social media she developed a keen knowledge in product execution and consumer buying. Joanna earned her BA degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia where she was a Full Scholarship athlete and a USA Junior National Team rower. She lives between Beijing, China and San Francisco, CA.

Steven Mednick

Steven Mednick is founder and president of Plenum Revenue Group, LLC in Newport Beach, California.Plenum is a business development advisory firm for emerging businesses to complex, global enterprises.

Steven advises Helios on business and client development as well as financial health. His vast experience in education and technology industries is a huge support to Helios.

Steven also teaches at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Prior to establishing Plenum in 2004, he was Director, Corporate Ventures at Silicon Graphics, Inc., where he established SGI’s corporate ventures office and led its global mergers & acquisitions and licensing initiatives.

In addition to Steven’s long history in the IT industry with companies such as IBM, SGI and Digital Equipment Corporation, he has also served as corporate attorney to a number of emerging companies in the IT and financial services industries.

Steven is a member of Tech Coast Angels and serves on the executive committee of Tech Coast Venture Network. He also sits on the advisory boards of The Entrepreneurship Institute, TriTech and the University of La Verne School of Business and Public Management.

Steven is a frequent speaker on early stage funding, corporate venturing, business development and the commercialization of intellectual property.

Brook Cross

Brook Cross is a catalyst for entrepreneurs and companies to find their way to the next level of success. He specializes in improving entrepreneurial and managerial skills and has been providing Strategic Planning Retreats and Managerial Coaching for over twenty years for a wide range of companies.

Brook helped Helios from product launch to establishing a growing customer base. He has been a true inspiration to our team and a great management coach.

His work has been featured in the Forms and Printing Industry where he is a speaker at national conferences and has written a regular column on management for a national trade journal.

Recent areas of focus include alternative sources of start-up funding and strategic integration of electronic and paper documents. Brook’s recent planning work with a major Fortune 100 company resulted in the plan being fully funded by the new parent company.

Brook is a graduate of Stanford University with a Masters from the University of California.