Louise Baigelman is the Founder and CEO of Storyshares, a literacy organization aimed at inspiring a love of reading globally. She was recognized as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education (2017) and the International Literacy Association’s 30 Under 30 in Literacy (2016). Louise received Teach for America’s Social Innovation Prize (2016) and the Library of Congress’s Best Practices in Literacy Prize (2018). She started her career as an English teacher at KIPP Academy in Massachusetts, later serving as a literacy coach in Brooklyn and a reading expert for Understood.org. Louise has also taught writing in the California Bay Area.
Company: Storyshares
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Louise Baigelman: I am the Founder and CEO of Storyshares, a mission-driven literacy organization dedicated to reimagining literacy for adolescents worldwide. I was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education in 2017, and the International Literacy Association’s 30 Under 30 in Literacy in 2016. I was also awarded Teach for America’s Social Innovation Prize in 2016, the Library of Congress’s Best Practices in Literacy Prize in 2018, and named a Milken Penn Education Business Plan Competition winner in 2023.
I was born and raised outside of Philadelphia, where I first became passionate about literacy education. I began my career as an English teacher at KIPP Academy in Lynn, Massachusetts, as a Teach for America corps member. There, I led the English Language Learner program and taught reading and writing to middle school students. I have also been a literacy coach to underserved youth in Brooklyn, a writing teacher in the California Bay Area, a program manager at the Poses Family Foundation, and a reading expert for Understood.org.
Since founding Storyshares from scratch, I and my team have grown the organization to include a library of over 600 newly published titles, which have been read for over 1,000,000 hours by readers in 180 countries around the world. We have driven this growth by developing over 40 partnerships with other literacy and education companies to expand the reach and impact of the Storyshares literacy solution. Our organization has consistently seen over 100,000 unique annual visitors to the website. Early studies indicate that over 90% of educators report improved reading attitudes and behaviors among their struggling readers when presented with Storyshares titles for reading practice.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Louise Baigelman: Storyshares is dedicated to supporting and empowering underserved and overlooked readers around the world. While literacy typically focuses on early learning, my team and I are spearheading the solution for adolescent literacy: how do we support and engage those students who are still learning to read, beyond the 3rd grade?
While there are intervention programs for teaching older students who read below grade level, there are not enough high-interest texts to accompany skill instruction. Books used for teaching phonics (called “decodable books”) are written for younger children. Middle schoolers don’t want to read books written for 6-year-olds. When I was teaching middle school students, she found that you just can’t give “Hop on Pop” to a 7th-grader and expect them to enjoy learning to read, or to read at all.
Determined to find a solution, I developed the first and only sustainable solution to reimagine the global library for striving readers at any age, bringing together and training a community of diverse authors to craft stories that are representative, intriguing, AND accessible for those students who still need books to practice. The result is a library of over 600 titles at any age/skill level, which are transforming students’ reading skills and life trajectories…. And spreading the joy of reading.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, is an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Louise Baigelman: I think this is a great question – and it is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. For me, building a great company relies fundamentally on great people. This requires finding the right people, but more importantly, it relies on keeping them energized and motivated to work towards a shared vision. I ran Storyshares for several years without having much money to bring on a team, and the only way I was able to build Storyshares to what it is today, was by tapping into all of these other key pieces that motivate us as humans: making people feel valued, and important, and excited. Making people feel part of something bigger than themselves. Doing this as a business leader is not dissimilar to doing this as a friend, or parent, or teacher, or spouse: you listen, you commiserate, you recognize, you applaud: you make people feel seen and heard and understood. You show them you are willing to get your hands dirty to help them when they hit obstacles that feel impossible to overcome, while also empowering them to believe that they are capable of solving these problems themselves. You provide clarity in the “why” and you offer freedom in the “what” and the “how.” At the end of the day though, you mostly just listen. And you connect. Those, to me, are the keys.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Louise Baigelman: Storyshares has grown almost 20-fold in the past year, and we are constantly thinking about how to sustain and to scale this growth. One of the ways we are able to do that is through all that is enabled by online business in today’s world: we are a remote team, and we rely on virtual meetings and digital communication for the majority of our productivity. While in-person interactions and work-time are almost always superior, the remote nature of our work allows us to blend productivity with flexibility, in both location and schedule. As a CEO and a mom to small children, I love to employ other moms with small children (we know how to get things done!), and I have a deep appreciation for the values of remote work when it comes to life balance.
In parallel, we have also managed to scale up our direct sales by enabling online shopping for people who want to purchase books, and by offering our professional learning sessions for educators both in-person and virtually, for asynchronous training opportunities. Over the next year, we will continue leveraging each of these channels – to grow our direct and organic business by leveraging the tools of the internet and of today’s digital world.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Louise Baigelman: For me, the real challenge is all about prioritizing in the face of growth. It is exciting to grow, and it is what we all hope for. But at the same time, it poses all sorts of new challenges and opportunities, and ones which come quickly – and urgently. I often say that I am rich in ideas but poor in means of executing, because there is truly so much we could seize on and tackle with force every single day, but we cannot reasonably do them all at once. So to me, the key to building on our traction and achieving the next level of success, relies on the discipline and focus to identify the most valuable paths forward, and to engage and empower the right people to bring them to life.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Louise Baigelman: My answer to this question is twofold: #1 is that it is all about relationships; people. #2 is that it is highly operational, at least in the early stages… far more than one might expect. I came to this work because of my love of the cause, and my inherent desire to create solutions. But my daily life involves less of those things now, and more of talking, talking, talking – and of addressing logistics all the way down to the nitty gritty details.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Louise Baigelman: I would like the ability to see into the future, and to back-plan from there. In my future-seeing fantasy, I’d have a super-boss of my own, who could tell me what to do because they know, already, that it’s the right thing to do.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision
Louise Baigelman: Success for Storyshares in 2024 is all about growth in pursuit of impact: can we prove out the efficacy of our literacy solution, and can we reach all of those millions of people who we know are looking for it at this very moment? The first half of 2024 has been incredibly inspiring to this end, but we have still just touched on the tip of the iceberg. By doubling down on what matters most – to developing our product, documenting its results, and expanding its reach – we can achieve the impact we know we are capable of.
