Bio
Jess Gartner is the CEO & Founder of Allovue, an EdFinTech company that empowers K-12 educators to strategically and equitably allocate financial resources. Allovue supports school districts across the nation in budgeting, managing, and evaluating spending for over a million students. Allovue has been credited with birthing the EdFinTech industry and hosts the annual Future of Education Finance Summit. She has been featured as one of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Education (2015, 2016 All-Star), Baltimore Sun’s Women to Watch (2013), and Baltimore Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 (2015). She was recognized as the 2014 Maryland SmartCEO Innovator of the Year in the Emerging Business category and won the 2016 Johns Hopkins Outstanding Alumni Award and 2016 Maryland TEDCO Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In 2017, Jess was featured as one of The Tech Edvocate’s Trailblazers in Edtech. She loves mentoring female founders and is a staunch advocate for diversity and inclusion. Before founding Allovue, Jess studied education policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated magna cum laude. She has taught in classrooms around the world, including Thailand, South Africa, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. She was a 2009 Teach for America Baltimore corps member and taught middle school humanities in Baltimore City. She received her M.A. in Teaching from Johns Hopkins University. She is President of the board for the local education non-profit Access Art for over five years and serves on the National Advisory Committee for Johns Hopkins School of Education. Beyond work, Jess can be found singing show tunes, stretching out at the nearest yoga studio, and working on her annual Life Olympics goals in her bullet journal.