What His Current Focus Is: Chaks is focused on creating a fun, easy-to-use parent-teacher communication tool for a new generation of social media and mobile-savvy parents who have children in schools, child cares and activities. Today’s parents are used to connecting and communicating through their smartphones and are fluent in the language of photos, likes, comments, and direct messages. With Bloomz, Chaks has created a mobile app with a familiar social media interface that encourages parents to participate in their child’s learning and connect to their teacher and community through a secure platform.

How He’s Transforming the EdTech Space: Chaks has helped bring the fast growing Bloomz to over 14,000 schools across the nation by combining a social networking interface with a comprehensive set of tools, from messaging and media sharing, to calendar, signups, and student behavior tracking—all at no cost. He aims at disrupting the parental engagement for the new generation.

What His Background Is: Before creating Bloomz, Chaks applied his computer science and engineering education at companies such as Microsoft, AskMe, and most recently as the vice president of product and partnerships at GlobalScholar, where he focused on building an end-to-end learning platform to connect teachers, students, and administrators. He founded Bloomz, Inc. in January 2014 and serves as the Founder and CEO.

What May Surprise You About Him: A parent of two school-aged children, Chaks created Bloomz after he and his wife both fell ill and had communication difficulties with their teachers and school community.