Welcoming Texas-based Dominic Via as Clever’s VP of Sales

We’re excited to announce that Dominic Via has joined Clever as our new Vice President of Sales! Dominic brings a ton of experience and a successful history in educational sales. With his background in education, e-learning, and publishing, he’s set to help school districts uplevel their edtech with Clever’s secure platform and instant access for students.

Rooted in Texas

Dominic’s career includes leadership roles at top education companies like Accelerate Learning, Reading Plus, IXL Learning, Frog Street Press, Odysseyware and Achieve3000. His Texas sales journey started at McGraw Hill and continued with Accelerate Learning in Houston, showing his deep commitment to improving education through innovative solutions. His strong Texas roots, both professionally and personally, shape his approach to educational sales and leadership.

Message from Dominic: Hey K-12 leaders, are you located in Texas? Connect with me on LinkedIn to learn more about events we’re hosting in your region!

Vision for Clever

At Clever, Dominic plans to use his extensive experience to bring streamlined, cost-effective solutions to schools that have rapidly adopted tech and encountered challenges during implementation. This includes Clever’s free rostering solutions, data privacy excellence, and classroom-friendly identity management and multi-factor authentication solutions. He aims to make edtech more accessible and effective for classrooms in his home state of Texas and around the world. For Dominic, this undertaking means valuing, listening, and implementing the thoughts and needs of global stakeholders and in turn, merging the global vision with the Clever roadmap. 

Q&A with Dominic

Q: You have a lot of history and experience in Texas. From your perspective, what are Texas schools excelling at?

Dominic Via: Before COVID, many Texas districts gave schools autonomy and latitude to choose their edtech resources. During asynchronous instruction, this led to a lack of standardization and challenges in measuring the success and fidelity of these tools. Now, there’s a shift towards better evaluation and standardization to ensure effective use across districts. Texas districts and schools have excelled at the evaluation of effective tools and are better at implementing what works in the classroom. 

Q: What issues or challenges are too often overlooked or deprioritized in schools?

Dominic Via: While gaps in math and reading get a lot of attention, data privacy and security at the classroom and curriculum levels are sometimes overlooked. Our school communities need to prioritize data privacy and security to protect against threats — it’s usually only after incidents occur that it becomes a priority. And after all, security incidents and breaches can also contribute to learning loss when schools go on lock down and recovery mode. Data privacy and security is not one more thing on the plate but should be viewed as the plate and foundation of classroom edtech tools. 

Q: What significant changes or shifts have you noticed in Texas schools this past year?

Dominic Via: With funding cuts, like the reduction of ESSER funds, districts are focusing more on evaluating the return on investment (ROI) and effectiveness of the tools they use. This means looking at product usage, fidelity, and overall impact on student outcomes to make informed decisions about which edtech tools to keep. Edtech tools, as great as they are, can and will never take the place of solid Tier 1 instruction that comes from our brightest and best teachers all across Texas and the country. Districts have invested well in teacher training and effectiveness. 

Welcome, Dominic! We’re thrilled to have you on board and can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make at Clever. For any K-12 leaders located in Texas, connect with Dominic on LinkedIn to learn more about events Clever is hosting in your region!