Why Changemaker?
Each Changemaker microschool is locally rooted and distinctly its own, while sharing a commitment to helping children flourish through love, autonomy, community, creativity, and equity.
Why Do We Exist?
Children have always needed to be known, loved, challenged, and connected. In the AI era, the distinctly human capacities of critical thinking, creativity, self-awareness, resilience, collaboration, and meaningful relationships matter more than ever.
Yet many families and educators are searching for learning environments that can respond more personally to each child and more freely to the needs of their communities. Changemaker Education exists to help local leaders build those environments.
For Families & Children
We help families discover small, human-centered learning communities where children can build strong academic foundations while developing confidence, curiosity, healthy relationships, and a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.
For Founders & Communities
We help educators, parents, and community leaders turn their vision into an independently owned microschool. Through coaching, practical infrastructure, Mind Body Soul resources, enrollment guidance, and peer community, Founders gain support while retaining ownership of their school and educational vision.
What Drives Changemaker Education?
Together, these values guide how we coach Founders, develop Mind Body Soul, support partner schools, and make decisions across our network. They call us to create environments where people feel seen and cared for, have meaningful ownership and choice, build belonging, imagine new possibilities, and expand educational opportunity.
Our Vision
We envision a future in which more students can access a deeply human, personalized education, and visionary educators and community leaders have the opportunity, support, and autonomy to build it.
Our Mission
Changemaker Education helps visionary educators and community leaders launch and sustain human-centered microschools that nurture each child’s full potential through love, autonomy, community, creativity, and equity.
Our Values
Love
Autonomy
Community
Creativity
Equity
About the CEO
David K. Richards is the Founder and CEO of Changemaker Education. For more than 25 years, he has served as a teacher, school principal, charter network executive, school founder, and leadership coach.
At Summit Public Schools, David helped build an innovative personalized-learning model that was adopted by more than 300 schools nationwide while supporting fundraising efforts that brought in more than $52 million to expand it.
David created Changemaker’s Mind Body Soul framework and hosts the Changemaker EdU Podcast, where he explores the future of human-centered education. He holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University and lives in Sacramento with his family.
About the COO
Joy Meserve is the COO of Changemaker Education and an experienced operational leader who builds systems and cultures where students, educators, and teams can thrive.
Before joining Changemaker, Joy spent 23 years helping scale iD Tech from four locations to more than 190 seasonal program locations across seven countries. During her tenure, her teams served more than 600,000 students and hired and trained more than 10,000 seasonal team members. The company was acquired by Emeritus for approximately $200 million in 2021.
At Changemaker, Joy develops the operating capacity, systems, and Founder support network that help independently owned microschools launch and sustain. Her Partner Leadership approach centers ownership, autonomy, trust, and shared success.
Bring Your Microschool Vision to Life
You do not have to choose between independence and support. Changemaker Education helps educators, parents, and community leaders build independently owned, locally rooted microschools with personalized coaching, practical resources, enrollment guidance, Mind Body Soul, and a community of fellow Founders.
