Company News

CourseStorm is growing. We are hiring new team members, scaling up our internship program, serving new customers, and every day we are connecting more learners to life-changing educational opportunities. 

We took some time recently as a company to celebrate our growth and reenergize ourselves to continue to work toward our ambitious goal of making 3 million connections to education by 2025. We are well on our way!  

One Thursday in July, CourseStormers gathered from all over our home state of Maine as well as from Maryland and Arizona. For many of us, it was the first time meeting our colleagues in person. For others, it was a happy reunion. For all of us, it was a chance to connect, learn more about each other, and have some fun in beautiful Belfast, Maine. 

Celebrating personal and professional growth

Kicking things off, CEO and co-founder Brain Rahill gave a heartfelt speech about how far CourseStorm has come. He reflected on the early days as a scrappy startup, when he and co-founder Matt James slept on the floor while attending a conference. Looking around the room, he marveled at the now 20+ employees and interns who are dedicated to fulfilling CourseStorm’s mission to streamline access to education and spur personal growth for as many people as possible. 

“While we may think we’re in the education technology business, we are actually in the personal growth business.” – CEO Brian Rahill

Brian called out employees by name and gave shoutouts to recently promoted members of the leadership team, acknowledging everyone for their commitment to personal growth and willingness to do hard things. He read off examples of recent course registrations CourseStorm has facilitated: Python programming, childbirth preparation, nursing assistant certification, improv, intro to Spanish. 

“While we may think we’re in the education technology business, we are actually in the personal growth business. Every registration represents a step along a student’s personal growth journey that we have facilitated,” noted Brian. And everyone at the company is here because we wholeheartedly believe in the power of education to change lives. 

Launching our next chapter

Next up on the agenda, we did what we at CourseStorm do best: try new things, fail, learn from our mistakes, and have fun in the process. On this day, that took the form of … bottle rockets! 

Taking a STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics — approach to the project, we started by decorating empty 2-liter bottles with paint, tape, jewels, and more. Some people got really into embellishing their rockets, while others focused on aeronautics. 

Then we headed outside to a nearby park to launch our bottle rockets. CourseStormers love a little friendly competition, so predictions were made for whose rockets would go the highest and farthest. The jury’s still out on the winner, but Matt’s undecorated “control” rocket and Brian’s extra-long rainbow-hued rocket were both in the running.

Competing for the best company culture

After lunch, it was time for the CourseStorm Olympics. The planning committee put a lot of work into coming up with numerous games to challenge everyone physically and mentally. From balloon races to cup stacking to archery and more, each team showed off their speed, agility, and/or sense of humor as they competed for first place. Winners were gifted trophies and tents. (In addition to being fun and competitive, we CourseStormers are an outdoorsy bunch!)

We are grateful to work at a place committed to fostering a positive, inclusive company culture for its employees.

We finished the day worn out, but with warm feelings about our wonderful company and colleagues, grateful that we work at a place as committed to fostering a positive, inclusive company culture for its employees as CourseStorm. 

We’re happy to share the secrets of our success! Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and check out some of the ways we build connection and camaraderie as a mostly remote team in our blog post, Fun Icebreakers for Adults to Use in Classes, Meetings, and More. 

Hi everyone, Matt here!

Today, I’m excited to give you a sneak peek into some cutting edge stuff we’ve been working on in the CourseStorm labs. Specifically—AI-powered reporting!

We’ve begun to apply the latest in artificial intelligence technology to helping you solve day-to-day problems and we’ve been blown away with the results. I hope you agree! Read on to learn more and see the demo.

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Hey everyone, Matt here!

As you may know, we kicked off this year with a driving focus: to talk to as many customers as we can to learn more about what you like and don’t like about using the CourseStorm product. I can’t tell you how much I love talking with customers and appreciate the treasure trove of feedback that you all have given us, both good and bad!

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Sometimes, a little extra boost is all it takes to spark a big change. That was the impetus behind CourseStorm’s SPARKed Grant Program, launched last year with the goal of awarding up to $10,000 in micro-grants to selected winners. Any nonprofit or for-profit educational organization or business providing learning opportunities to the public was eligible to apply.

CourseStorm received many strong applications from worthy organizations, making the selection process quite challenging. In the end, we chose eight applicants from across the United States, ranging from an aviation training provider to youth arts organizations, as the recipients of our inaugural SPARKed Grant Program. The SPARKed Grant will provide all of these organizations with funds to develop, market, and provide new programs or expand their existing offerings to reach more people.  

“We have an amazing group of organizations selected to receive the SPARKed Grant. These programs already have such a positive impact on their communities and we’re so excited to help them reach their goals,” said Nic Lyons, Marketing Manager of CourseStorm. Given the company’s roots as a startup, we know that even a small financial boost can make a big difference for organizations like these and help them make an even bigger impact. Here’s a look at the first-ever SPARKed Grant Winners.

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As we come to the end of another year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past year and share some of our successes at CourseStorm. It’s been an exciting year for our company! We’ve made some great strides in achieving our mission of streamlining access to your educational classes and programs. Read on to learn more about the changes we’ve made this year!

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At CourseStorm, we’re always looking for ways to make class registration simpler and smoother. That’s why we’re delighted to announce our new integration with Little Green Light. The donor management software helps nonprofits improve fundraising and donor relationships through their online platform. Now you can add seamless class registration to that list.

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CourseStorm was proud to announce the SPARKed Grant Program, a grant-based program awarding $10,000 in micro grants for education programs between $500 and up to $2,000 each. The application was open to any educational organization or business providing learning opportunities to the public, including for-profit programs. The deadline for applications was December 31st and awards will be announced in February 2023.

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Hi everyone! It’s Matt from CourseStorm.

I wanted to take a moment and give an update on some great new features we’ve been working on here at HQ. Some of these updates you’ll be seeing before the end of the month and for some other, larger updates we’ll be sharing more info throughout the coming months. It’s definitely an exciting and busy time for our team and we can’t wait to share it all with you!

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We’re excited to start off this year with two new members of the CourseStorm team, Marketing Associate, Greg Shula, and Quality Assurance Analyst Nicholas Riegel.

“We are excited to expand our team with the addition of Nicholas and Greg in these new roles. Together, they will help us grow our marketing and maintain our rigorous product quality standards as we continue to scale to meet the needs of educational organizations across the US,” said Brian Rahill, CourseStorm CEO. 

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It’s been a busy time at CourseStorm, and we’re glad to finally have the time to formally welcome Marketing Manager Nicole Lyons and Sales Account Representative Tricia Cooke to the CourseStorm team! 

“Our strength at CourseStorm has always come from the strength of our team. As the company continues to expand, we are always on the hunt for helpful, growth-oriented people to join in our journey, and Nicole and Tricia certainly fit that mold,” commented Brian Rahill, CourseStorm CEO. “We are excited by the impact they will make in helping us streamline access to education for students nationwide.”

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