David Cumberbatch is a Senior Advisor for K-12 Solutions at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where his primary focus is commercialization. He is also a Senior Advisor to Apogee Equity Partners and New Markets Ventures, and is a member of the board of advisors for Village Capital and Riiid Labs.
Mr. Cumberbatch served as the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President at Stride, Inc. (formerly K12, Inc.) from 2014 to 2016, where he focused on K12’s expansion into career readiness and education technology solutions, including the acquisition of LTS. Prior to his tenure at Stride, Mr. Cumberbatch served as the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of ACT Inc. (the non-profit leader in college and career readiness assessment in the U.S.) from 2011 to 2014. At ACT, he re-positioned the ACT brand and collaborated on the development of the digital ACT test and the launch of ACT Aspire.
He has held leadership positions with start-ups including Imagitas and Simpletuition. Prior to that, Mr. Cumberbatch played an instrumental role at Microsoft Corporation – his business development work was featured in Fortune magazine. He also served as a Brand Manager for Procter & Gamble in Europe, and Latin America.
Mr. Cumberbatch earned a B.A. in Computing and Economics (Hons, First Class) from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and an MPhil in Management Studies from the University of Oxford where he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
He began his working life as an Assistant Teacher in the public school system of his native Trinidad and Tobago and remains passionate about the potential for technology to transform global education. He currently resides in Iowa with his wife and two sons.