Diana Heldfond, CEO of Parallel Learning, staffs school districts with psychologists, speech therapists, and special education teachers to serve students with learning and mental health differences. Her company now operates in 15 states after raising $30 million, driven by her own childhood dyslexia diagnosis and the pandemic's disruption of special education services.
Diana, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
Of course. So to start, please tell me about what your company Parallel Learning does.
So we provide both software and services to school districts around the country. We work specifically with their special education department. So in K-12 districts, you have general education and then you have special education, which is about roughly 15% of students who usually have a learning or thinking difference, mental health challenge, and we basically staff school psychologists, speech therapists, special ed teachers, a whole host of different professionals who work directly with students to make sure that, you know, even the most complex students are set up for success in the district.
I want to hear about the why. Tell me about your founding story, how this came about.
Well, I'll start with I have dyslexia and ADHD, so I fall very squarely into the population of students that we now work with here at Parallel.
Okay.
And was lucky enough to have access to a lot of resources growing up. My mom in particular was very on top of things, made sure that I really reaped the benefits of early detection and early intervention for my, my challenges, and was diagnosed when I was 7 years old, which is a very unique story. Most kids are years behind in core academic subjects or struggling with, with very severe mental health challenges before anyone really intervenes on their behalf. And so with that, I was extremely motivated by my own experience to kind of recreate my reality at scale for more students. And was also paired with, you know, the start of the pandemic when so many students, you know, schools were struggling to put general education online. Nevertheless, you know, special ed students were just simply not getting served at all.
Mm-hmm.
And was, you know, extremely kind of concerned to see the dire circumstances. And, and that was kind of ultimate culmination for jumping into Parallel. I've been really excited to partner with, you know, some amazing clinicians in the space, operators, engineers, to really bring Parallel to life.
Talk to me about how many students and educators you serve and how that's grown over time.
Yeah, it's grown a lot, very quickly. So we started actually working with school districts just over a year ago. So prior to that, we were actually serving families who were actually not getting served within the school districts or were looking for additional services, and that business was fantastic and growing, you know, also very rapidly. The districts came to us and said, you know, we actually desperately need your services as well. And so that gave rise in spring of 2022 of when we started deciding to work with school districts directly. That's actually now 100% of our business. It's been an absolute joy to work with districts, you know, across the country. We're in 15 states at this point serving thousands of students per month doing both psychological assessments, speech assessments, mental health assessments, and then also doing the kind of ongoing services. So things like speech therapy, special ed teaching, and so on. So really becoming this kind of full-stop partner, I should say, for school districts.
Tell me about your fundraising journey. What's that been like for you and how much have you raised so far?
It's been a really exciting journey. It's amazing to see how many institutional investors ultimately support our mission and really want to see Parallel grow. I'm a solo founder, so fundraising has been something that has fully fallen on my plate. And with that, we've gotten a lot of traction. So we've now raised about $30 million in total from some of really the top investors out there, Tiger Global, Obvious Ventures, Rethink Impact Fund just led a small round. We've been really lucky to work with, you know, kind of investors of all different backgrounds, both from the more impact-centric investors who have, you know, more education, more healthcare-specific experience, to the kind of big growth funds and really see it from all sides. So it's an amazing opportunity to have, you know, everyone around the table, and everyone's been, you know, highly supportive of making Parallel what it is today. Awesome.
One last question for you. What would you like your legacy to be?
I think as, you know, a founder in this space, you have to say it's got a mission element, right? Like, obviously everyone that works for Parallel, it's great that we're a venture-backed company and we're growing quickly. And like, the business success is part of it, but I think more than anything, that actually means that we've done really a lot of good in the world and that we've really helped change the trajectory for For students just like myself, that like, frankly, if I did not have access to resources that I did early on, I would not be sitting here today. I would not have the confidence for that. I would not have that basic skill set. With that in mind, I think that's probably like the biggest motivation is how do I really, you know, hit the point where I feel like we've helped as many students as we possibly can.
