GoGuardian

Leadership Team

Advait Shinde Headshot

Advait Shinde

Co-Founder & CEO

Advait co-founded GoGuardian to provide K-12 schools with new technologies that enable students to engage in a better learning experience. His dedication to help unlock student potential in education is made clear through his mission of using the internet in an open, but safe way. In his role as CEO of GoGuardian, Advait brings his passion for using data and technology to solve problems in education.

Based on his accomplishments in education and technology, Advait was selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Education in 2016, as a finalist for Los Angeles Business Journal’'s CTO of the Year in 2017, as a finalist for Ernst & Young's prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Greater Los Angeles in 2018, and for Los Angeles Business Journal’s 20 in Their 20s in 2019.

Before co-founding GoGuardian, Advait worked at Google as an engineer, combining innovation with the power of scale and helping to launch key products, such as Google Pay (formerly Google Wallet). Advait holds a B.S. in Computer Science from UCLA.

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Mike Jonas Headshot

Mike Jonas

Co-President & Chief Operating Officer

As COO & Co-President, Mike leads GoGuardian's revenue and strategic initiatives, driving operational excellence across the organization and ensuring the company serves customers and students at the highest level. His cross-functional teams include Corporate Strategy, Legal, Revenue, Customer Success, and TutorMe Operations. Having previously served as GoGuardian's CFO, Mike brings more than 20 years of finance and corporate growth experience to his role. He's held senior financial and operational roles in several enterprise businesses including 14 years leading corporate finance at Microsoft for Microsoft Office and Bing.

Mike has an incredible track record in guiding and scaling SaaS businesses, as well as a unique instinct for identifying and managing high-performing and smart growth opportunities.

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Tyler Shaddix Headshot

Tyler Shaddix

Chief innovation Officer

Tyler led GoGuardian’s product strategy from 2015-2021, overseeing the conception and development of GoGuardian Teacher and AI-powered Smart Alerts, along with envisioning and leading the development of the breakthrough suicide prevention tool, Beacon. His contributions have fueled GoGuardian’s growth and affirmed the company’s products as the industry’s gold standard, earning multiple industry awards and endorsements.

With a decade of software development experience, Tyler founded two SaaS analytics companies prior to joining GoGuardian. He is an acclaimed thought leader, open-source contributor, and public speaker on topics such as UX, high-growth product development, education technology, and design thinking.

Tyler holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California, Merced.

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Kate Beihl

Dionna Smith

Chief Diversity and Public Affairs Officer

Dionna is GoGuardian’s first Chief Diversity and Public Affairs Officer, bringing more than 15 years of experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion leadership, inclusive product design, and multicultural marketing. She creates and executes strategies to build inclusive and diverse teams that will guide the creation of inclusive products, and work towards a future where all learners are ready and inspired to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Among her career honors and accolades, Smith was selected for Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2015 40 Under 40 Awards, and she received the National Diversity Council’s Diversity Champion award and the Mogul’s 2021 Top DEI Leaders Award. She is on the advisory board at Power To Fly, an organization which upskills and connects underrepresented talent to roles in highly visible sectors.

Dionna attended Howard University and has a BA in Media Arts from Tulane University. Prior to joining GoGuardian she led DEI at Thumbtack and held DEI, multicultural marketing & HR leadership roles at Delta Airlines, LexisNexis, Fiserv, and Cisco.

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Kate Beihl

Kate Beihl

Chief Marketing Officer

Kate leads GoGuardian’s marketing team, bringing over 20 years in leadership and executive roles in education, technology, healthcare, and B2B marketing. She oversees all aspects of GoGuardian’s brand strategy and integrated marketing, elevating the company’s unique story of empowering safer students for better learning through technology.

Kate joined GoGuardian’s leadership team through the merger with Pear Deck. Kate served as the Vice President of Marketing at Pear Deck. She joined the company after their Series A and built out the go-to-market functions while leading brand partnerships, product marketing, public relations, social strategy, successfully growing Pear Deck’s global community of educators.

Kate holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from the University of Iowa.

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Elizabeth Dadanian Headshot

Elizabeth Dadanian

Chief People Officer

Liz leads GoGuardian’s PeopleOps in support of the philosophy that people are why the business succeeds. GoGuardian is just at the beginning of writing its amazing story, and Liz is cultivating an intentional culture as the bedrock of even further growth, scale, and innovation. Through more than 25 years of experience leading teams in Fortune 50, start-up, and consulting environments, she has developed the understanding that it isn’t just what people do, but why and how they do it that matters. Liz also oversees talent management, development, recruiting, diversity and inclusion, HR service delivery, and facilities.

A CPA with a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California, Liz founded a leadership consulting company and has held numerous leadership roles at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Toyota Motors Sales, and ZestFinance.

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Sharad Gupta Headshot

Sharad Gupta

Chief Product Officer

Sharad heads GoGuardian’s product management, engineering, design, user experience, and business insights teams to drive growth and innovation. His organization works to advance GoGuardian’s mission-driven work of building innovative, accessible, and safe technologies that help all learners to be ready and inspired to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Before joining GoGuardian, Sharad served in various leadership roles over 10 years at Amazon, including head of worldwide deals & promotions and global private label pricing. Most recently, he led a global team of product managers, engineers, and machine learning (ML) scientists to enable e-commerce marketplace growth through innovation. He has built multi-billion dollar businesses through customer-centric teams that operate at scale.

Sharad holds his B.A. and Master’s from Delhi University in addition to an MBA focused on Corporate Strategy from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

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