Meet the Team
Steven Hornyak
Co-FounderAn 18-year veteran of public education who began his career as a high school math teacher and has since served in leadership roles spanning school improvement, accountability, data analytics, and instructional technology. Steven currently serves as Chief Innovation Officer for the Houston County School District — serving 31,000 students in central Georgia.
Steven designed the SMoSS accountability system used across 38 schools, built the Intervention Express platform, and led the expansion of the district's virtual learning program.
With over four years of dedicated experience working with large language models and AI systems, Steven created the STRIVE Framework and the C3 meta-competency model — the curricular and intellectual backbone of everything we build. His deep understanding of how AI reshapes teaching, learning, and institutional decision-making positions him as one of the leading practitioner voices in K-12 AI literacy. Steven doesn't just study AI in education — he architects the systems that put it to work in real classrooms, at scale.
Jake Harvey
Co-FounderA middle school STEM teacher and CTSO (Career and Technical Student Organization) advisor who brings deep expertise in project-based learning, student-centered instruction, and hands-on technology integration.
Jake advises multiple student clubs and has a practitioner's understanding of how students actually engage with technology in the classroom — not in theory, but in practice, every day.
Jake created LIA2 — the Local Interactive Artificial Intelligence Assistant — an air-gapped AI platform designed to run on local hardware, giving schools access to large language model capabilities without sending student data to the cloud. His work represents a breakthrough in privacy-first AI deployment for education.