BSG Executive Search Blog

BSG Team Ventures completes DC search for President & COO of Teaching Strategies

Written by Megan Gillis | Jul 15, 2015 4:55:03 PM

BSG Team Ventures is proud to announce the successful recruitment of Mark Belles as a new addition to the leadership team at Teaching Strategies. Reporting to CEO Ron Davies, he will be serving as the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company, bringing to the organization leadership experience at a variety of leading education, travel, and technology and service companies.

Prior to Teaching Strategies, Belles spent over eight years at Blackboard, the DC-based education technology company. There he served in a variety of leadership positions, including as Senior Vice President of Global Sales Operations and Strategies, GM of Australia, New Zealand and China, and most recently as Senior Vice President, K-12.

Before that, Belles spent time at Virtuoso, a leader luxury travel network where he served as the Executive Vice President of Sales and Service.

Belles earned his BA in Mathematics and Economics from St. Olaf College.

About Teaching Strategies, LLC

Teaching Strategies is a dynamic early childhood education company that provides the most innovative and effective curriculum, assessment, professional development, and family connection resources to programs serving children from birth through kindergarten. With ground-breaking solutions and a strong belief that the most powerful way to impact child outcomes is to improve teacher effectiveness, Teaching Strategies has been supporting the critical work of early childhood educators for over 25 years.

About BSG Team Ventures Education Practice

For almost two decades BSG Team Ventures has been an active participant in the growth of the Education industry, with a track record that includes more than 250 senior-level searches for companies big and small, public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit, at the VP level and above. Many have been with private equity partners.

Its industry expertise comprises the full spectrum of education markets--K-12, postsecondary, corporate, and consumer--and products and services that include distance learning, SES and EMO, administrative and curricular technology solutions, assessment, teacher professional development, for-profit college education, and corporate training. Clients have gone public, merged, been acquired, raised and invested capital, grown through acquisition, and, with most, thrived under strong leadership.

BSG's commitment to the industry also goes beyond executive search. As sponsor and panelist for such industry events as the GSV Summit, Capital Roundtable’s Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Education Companies; APSCU's Education Industry Finance and Investment Institute and Senior Executive Management Seminar; and the SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit, BSG has remained persistent in its belief that competence as a service provider begins with knowledge of an industry's people, companies, niches, and trends.