Jonathan Grayer

Founder & CEO

Weld North

Jonathan founded Weld North in 2010, now the largest digital curriculum provider to K-12 schools in the U.S.   He is the former Chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc., a global education company. Upon completing his M.B.A., Jonathan joined Newsweek, a WPO company, where he was soon named marketing director. He joined Kaplan in 1991 as regional operations director, and held several titles before becoming President and CEO in 1994. Jonathan was named Chairman of Kaplan in 2002.

When Jonathan became CEO of Kaplan, the company was an $80 million test preparation business. Through a series of strategic acquisitions that brought Kaplan into the higher education and professional training markets, and by creating substantial organic growth in Kaplan’s traditional lines of business, Kaplan grew into a company that provides lifelong learning to students around the world. The company had more than $2.3 billion in revenue in 2008 when Jonathan left Kaplan.

Jonathan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in History in 1986 and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1990. He now serves on the boards of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where he is active in supporting Genomics research, the Partnership Fund for New York City, and the Columbia Global Reports. In September 2005, he was named by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings to the Commission on the Future of Higher Education.