Photo by Webb Chappell

In the early days of the pandemic in 2020, Curriculum Associates, a Massachusetts-based company that creates research-based print and online instructional and assessment tools, made the decision to make its products free to teachers and students who suddenly found themselves in virtual classrooms. In three and a half weeks, Curriculum Associates added 1 million students. (In the previous eight years, it had enrolled 8 million.)

“The things that mattered most were not the things we did in that moment. It took a decade to be ready for a week I never thought we would have,” CEO Rob Waldron (MBA 1992) says now. “You need to have an outstanding team; you have to have the right product; you have to have the business systems; you have to be the right kind of organization.”

For Waldron, that means being a company with purpose every day. Its mission to make classrooms better places for teachers and children drew him to the company in 2008. Waldron had spent most of his career in the education sector, working for both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, in mission-driven and profit-driven settings. His experiences had convinced him that socially responsible, for-profit companies could make the biggest positive impact in education. When Waldron joined Curriculum Associates, the company had already been doing just that for almost 40 years. “There is a relationship between long-term thinking, social purpose, and success,” he explains.

Since taking over as CEO 14 years ago, Waldron has invested in the foundations of this relationship. He has focused on service to employees and stakeholder communities, increasing the company’s minimum wage to $15 in 2015 and overseeing a historic gift of about $200 million in stock to the Iowa State University Foundation and the Boston Foundation. At the same time, Curriculum Associates has transitioned from a solely print-based company to a largely online one, earned local and national best-places-to-work awards, seen revenues increase 20 times over. “It turns out doing what is right and what is good will offer the best returns for investors, for customers, and for employees,” Waldron says.

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