From Teacher to Visionary: A Product Leader Shaped by Students
Grounded in the Classroom and Guided by Vision, Kristin Leads with a Commitment to Belonging and Student-Centered Innovation
I grew up in a small, rural community in the middle of farmland Illinois, the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and the school hallways hold generations of memories. I went to school there from kindergarten through high school. And then, years later, I came back, this time to teach. There is something grounding about returning to the place that shaped you. Sitting in the same rooms I once sat in as a student, I felt the weight of that responsibility. Not just to teach well, but to make learning mean something, especially for kids in small communities who might never hear anyone tell them that their curiosity matters, that their ideas have a place in the world.
The shift from the classroom to product wasn’t about leaving my students behind. It was about finding a way to reach more of them. A way to scale transformative experiences that spark something pivotal.
—Kristin Whalen, Vice President, Product and Experience | SmartLab
From my very first year in that classroom, I couldn’t help but ask: what if we did this differently? I rewrote units. I reimagined how students experienced content. I wanted STEM to feel digestible and exciting, not something overwhelming to endure, but something to belong to. I wanted every kid who had been told, in ways spoken and unspoken, that STEM wasn’t for them, to see the world differently and to feel that they do belong in this space. I spent countless hours reworking units to try to accomplish this. I would often stay later than even the custodians, working in my classroom until nine or ten at night, finalizing an activity for the following week or putting the finishing touches on a project rubric for an upcoming lesson. This obsession with improvement wasn’t a job requirement; it was instinct. It felt like my purpose.
But over time, I began to see that this opportunity was not isolated to only my classroom, but a part of a much larger system. The structures. The tools. The way learning itself was built. I was reaching 25 students at a time and doing everything I could to make it count, but I kept thinking about all the classrooms I would never touch, all the learners who deserved that same consideration and sense of belonging and were not getting it.
The decisions we make every day aren’t abstract. They connect directly to whether a student somewhere — maybe in a small rural school, maybe in a place not so different from where I grew up — gets to experience that ah-HA! moment. That sudden spark when something clicks, when curiosity catches fire, when a learner realizes: I belong here. I can do this. My ideas matter.
—Kristin Whalen, Vice President, Product and Experience | SmartLab
The shift from the classroom to product wasn’t about leaving my students behind. It was about finding a way to reach more of them. A way to scale transformative experiences that spark something pivotal.
After I first left the classroom, I spent nearly four years as a content and instructional developer, designing learning experiences and professional development for teachers across the country. For the first time, I wasn’t just building one lesson for one class. I was building systems, and I could feel the difference that made.
From there, I moved into curriculum management, instructional leadership, and eventually product strategy, roles that brought me deeper into the architecture of learning itself. Every step sharpened my thinking about what it means to design with students in mind at every layer of an organization.
Today, as Vice President of Product and Experience, I lead a team that connects learning design and implementation into something coherent and purposeful. The decisions we make every day aren’t abstract. They connect directly to whether a student somewhere, maybe in a small rural school, maybe in a place not so different from where I grew up, gets to experience that ah-HA moment. That sudden spark when something clicks, when curiosity catches fire, when a learner realizes: I belong here. I can do this. My ideas matter.
Kristin’s journey reflects exactly where SmartLab is headed. Over the past two years, she has been instrumental in building products that align our SmartLab Approach with our ultimate goal of ensuring every student develops a STEM identity. I’m incredibly excited to welcome Kristin to the leadership table, where her deep commitment to students and her vision for meaningful learning experiences will help guide our strategic decisions forward. This is exactly the kind of leadership our future requires.
—Dr. Jennifer Berry, CEO | SmartLab
Being part of the SmartLab team isn’t just a career evolution for me; it’s a full-circle commitment. Every product decision, every curriculum update, and every piece of support we build for facilitators and schools is ultimately about one thing: making sure more students get to feel what it means to have a STEM identity. To know, without a doubt, that I am contributing to preparing the next generation to be future-ready.
