As vice president of program excellence, Simona Campbell oversees strategic growth initiatives for education tech company 2U Inc. And there are plenty of such initiatives for a company's that's already grown exponentially, from $29 million to $286 million in revenue and 300 to 1,800 employees in the past seven years. Campbell has also launched the company’s “Mentor Mondays,” which aims to build community around the advance of women at 2U. — Andy Medici
Q&A
What do you hope will be the biggest change to your industry 40 years from now? More options for pursuit of education that acknowledge and accommodate different life paths. Our business allows working professionals to pursue quality educational opportunities that will change their lives without completely upending their lives to get there. I’d love to see this kind of meaningful, substantive change at the structural level in the undergraduate and K-12 sectors.
What do you think will be the booming new industries in 2058? A good friend of mine works in blockchain, investigating ways it can be applied beyond just cryptocurrency and deregulation. I think there are applications we haven’t even thought of yet for the blockchain concept that will unlock completely new ways of engaging communities and doing business. Blockchain frameworks are already being applied to industries like health care and supply chain, but I can also see it having relevance to concepts as micro as project management and as broad as immigration.
What do you hope to be doing in retirement? Traveling the world with my husband and, if I’m fortunate enough to have them, taking care of my grandchildren when their parents need a break.
If you could have tech replace one work task in the future, it would be: Scheduling meetings, specifically with the ability to recognize when people have flexibility around other events that are already scheduled on their calendars.
What futuristic tech do you wish you could incorporate in your daily life? There is so much information in my daily work that resides in people’s memories or emails and part of my role today includes strategically housing this information into documented, searchable best practices and artifacts. I’d love a USB drive to stick in your ear that transfers information from one person to another, so that we could spend quality time together talking about the substance and nuance of the information, rather than having to start with overviews, context and fundamentals.
If your life could most resemble any sci-fi film or show, which would it be and why? While I would take out the sad and scary parts, I loved the ultimate message of communication and relationships from "Arrival." I would love to have the ability that Dr. Banks discovers on how to reimagine language and perspective and gain an even more complex understanding of true empathy for others.
A colony is built on Mars. Are you moving? I’m a creature of habit and comfort, so I’d probably be one of the last to move
If you had your choice of futuristic superpower, what would it be? Teleportation. It would save me both the time and stress of commuting between work, school pickup/dropoff and kid activities each day