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St. John’s Northwestern Academies Introduces AP Seminar in Fall 2024

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Diploma program focuses on college-level research, collaboration, and presentation skills crucial for college and career success

DELAFIELD, Wis., Oct. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — St. John’s Northwestern Academies is one of approximately 3,500 schools worldwide to offer AP® Seminar, which is part of the AP Capstone Diploma program. The program focuses on developing essential skills for college and career success, such as critical thinking, research, collaboration, and communication. Students who score a 3 or higher in both AP Seminar and AP Research, as well as on four additional AP Exams of their choosing, earn the AP Capstone Diploma. This signifies outstanding academic achievement and attainment of college-level academic and research skills. Students who score a 3 or higher in both AP Seminar and AP Research (and not on 4 additional AP Exams) earn the AP Seminar and Research Certificate™.

St. John’s Northwestern Academies has introduced the first component of the AP Capstone program, AP Seminar, this fall. AP Research is scheduled to be offered in the Fall of 2026.

“The AP Capstone program will prepare our diverse student population to become skilled collaborators, critical thinkers, and consumers of information. The Capstone courses will give students flexibility to explore the complex topics affecting their lives, and we are excited to offer this tremendous learning opportunity to our students,” said Stephanie Ihler, Chief Academic Officer.

In AP Seminar, taken at SJNA as a 10th grade honors course or as an elective course for juniors and seniors, students choose real-world topics and evaluate them from multiple perspectives. Students identify credibility and bias in sources and develop arguments in support of a recommendation.

AP Seminar is project-based, and students are required to deliver written arguments, collaborate in teams, and deliver professional multimedia presentations as part of their AP Exam.

“The core AP Capstone courses, AP Seminar and AP Research empower students to deeply engage with real-world issues, cultivating key research, writing, collaboration, and presentation skills,” said Bianca Peart, global director of the AP Capstone Diploma program.

In partnership with the higher education community, College Board developed AP Capstone courses so students can practice and master skills essential for success in college and career.

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SOURCE St. John’s Northwestern Academies

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Tyler Montague Joins Swayable as Vice President of Customer & Research Success

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Swayable appoints top advertising industry executive to drive enterprise growth and support

NEW YORK, Oct. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Swayable, the world’s most powerful creative pre-testing platform, announced today the appointment of marketing industry veteran Tyler Montague as Vice President of Customer Success. 

Montague comes to Swayable with over 25 years of advertising and marketing communications experience with agencies including executive roles at Ogilvy, Saatchi, and Grey. In his new role, he will build and scale a customer service and account expansion model to support Swayable best-in-class creative testing platform.

“I am excited to welcome Tyler to our executive team,” said James Slezak, CEO and Founder of Swayable. “His deep understanding of the advertising landscape, relationship management, and track record of expansion will be key to our next phase of scaling and growth.” 

Montague has been part of multiple agency leadership teams and has helped both US and Global clients across a range of categories and sectors navigate the ever-changing creative landscape. 

“One of the reasons I’m excited to join Swayable is because I see so much value in fueling a more iterative creative process with more real-time customer feedback. Swayable’s pre-testing platform opens up a whole new world of experimentation and exploration, where work can be informed by data as you go rather than judged too late in the process.”

Tyler’s most recent agency experience is in the health sector, where improving agility and speed has become an increasingly important priority – and one that’s an increasingly difficult challenge as brands grapple with the tension between being agile and data-led across a broad range of content and channels.

About Swayable
Swayable is the world’s most powerful creative pre-testing platform, measuring how content changes minds. The company was founded by Dr James Slezak, Physics Ph.D. from Cornell, who saw the opportunity to apply experimental science and cloud computing to understand how campaigns persuade. Swayable is now used by major brands like AirBnB, Amazon, Meta, Paramount, T-Mobile, and Uber to identify which messaging, concepts, and advertisements will be most effective with target consumers. This drives significant increases in cost-efficiency and effectiveness of advertising spend.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tyler-montague-joins-swayable-as-vice-president-of-customer–research-success-302290478.html

SOURCE Swayable

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Storj Promotes Colby Winegar to CEO to lead the Distributed Cloud Services Platform into its Next Chapter of Growth and Impact

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Ben Golub to continue leading the Board of Directors as Executive Chair, collaborating with Winegar

ATLANTA, Oct. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Storj today announces Colby Winegar has been promoted to lead the rapidly growing distributed cloud platform provider as CEO. He has served as Storj’s Chief Revenue Officer for several years, driving pivotal strategic partnerships, technical alliances, acquisitions and new customers that have transformed the organization from a provider of distributed cloud object storage to a robust distributed cloud platform providing distributed storage, on-demand high-performance GPU compute and client mount file management.

Prior to Storj, Colby co-founded and led CrowdStorage, which was the world’s largest distributed cloud storage platform connecting underutilized storage space across geographies to provide secure, reliable, affordable cloud storage. He scaled CrowdStorage to serve over 1,000 customers, including Western Digital and Vivint. Colby also oversaw strategic partnerships and new growth opportunities for Vivint Smart Home, the leading smart home services provider in North America, where he launched partnerships with Best Buy and Airbnb.

“Colby has been instrumental to Storj’s most significant developments, from the acquisitions of Valdi and PetaGene this year, to cultivating outstanding customers and building an award-winning partner ecosystem,” said Ben Golub, outgoing Storj CEO and current Executive Board Chairperson. “He is uniquely suited with skills, experience, leadership and vision needed to continue driving Storj towards its full potential.”

Golub has served as Storj’s CEO and Executive Chair for just over six years. Initially joining as interim CEO, Golub has been in the process of transitioning CEO responsibilities to Winegar over the last six months. Golub will continue as Executive Chair. To backfill Colby’s prior CRO role as he moves into the CEO role, Storj recently hired a direct sales team leader and promoted an individual to run the channel sales team. They now both report directly to Colby.

Storj is disrupting the $2 trillion cloud services market with distributed solutions that yield up to 90% lower costs and 83% less carbon emissions for customers. By leveraging distributed resources, spanning storage, compute, GPU, and filemount, Storj is uniquely positioned to accelerate the world’s most challenging distributed workflow use cases – from video production to AI training and inference. Enterprise organizations are quickly embracing the advantages of the distributed cloud – particularly due to its cost-efficiency and sustainability – without compromising on performance, scalability and security.

Colby says, “Especially with AI adoption accelerating across industries, enterprises need new solutions to manage skyrocketing amounts of data while innovating more rapidly, affordably and sustainably. Storj is poised to provide this, unburdened by crushing procurement and infrastructure liabilities that hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are inherently hampered by. I’m proud to step into the CEO role and continue leading the company’s direction together with technical alliance partners, customers and resellers which increasingly recognize the transformative capabilities Storj delivers through its distributed cloud.”

Storj’s S3 compatible storage architecture leverages unused capacity distributed across drives and data centers in over 100 countries and over 20,000 points of presence. It also provides GPUs on-demand via its distributed global network and offers a client mount so customers can easily treat file storage the same as object storage and vice-versa.

Storj is now the largest successful DePIN organization in the world, and has successfully bridged the gap between Web3 innovation and rigorous Enterprise requirements. The company’s growth and success has elevated market receptivity for DePIN solutions as a whole, and together with partners including LivePeer, Akash, POKT and HiveMapper. With data storage and compute emerging as a top contributor of carbon emissions and expense for organizations – distributed solutions like Storj’s deliver an infinitely, rapidly scalable solution by eliminating supply chain and resource demands, and waste. Storj delivers speed, scalability, security, reliability and sustainability by design, and is meeting the most high-performance data-intensive compute demands.

“It has been extremely gratifying to see the progress that Storj has made in pioneering a new, distributed approach to cloud services,” said Brian Lillie, Storj Board member and President of Rackspace Private Cloud.  “I’d like to thank Ben for his leadership in bringing Storj to this position and congratulate Colby on his new and expanded role.”

About Storj
Storj is redefining the cloud to advance the future of data—sustainably and economically. Storj leverages the vast global supply of underutilized resources to deliver services with better security, durability and performance. Experience up to 90% lower costs and carbon reduction with Storj. Follow Storj on LinkedIn, X and Instagram.

Press Contact:
Jackie Lucas
Vice President, Global Communications
385666@email4pr.com
978-255-1159

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/storj-promotes-colby-winegar-to-ceo-to-lead-the-distributed-cloud-services-platform-into-its-next-chapter-of-growth-and-impact-302291510.html

SOURCE Storj

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MoneySmart Celebrates 15 Years of Empowering Consumers Through Smarter Financial Choices

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SINGAPORE, Oct. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — MoneySmart Group, Southeast Asia’s leading personal finance group, is proud to celebrate 15 years of empowering individuals and families to make smarter financial decisions through its flagship brand, MoneySmart. Since its founding in 2009, MoneySmart has evolved from a simple loan comparison site into a trusted and comprehensive financial marketplace and content hub, helping millions of users navigate complex financial decisions with clarity and confidence.

Originally launched in Singapore (moneysmart.sg), and later expanding into Hong Kong SAR in 2017 (moneysmart.hk), the MoneySmart brand has been central to MoneySmart Group’s evolution, laying the foundation for the broader group business. Since then, over the last two years, MoneySmart has attracted over 60 million visits to its platform and facilitated more than 750,000 transactions, spanning a diverse range of financial products such as credit cards, loans and insurance.

Building on years of consumer insights gained through MoneySmart, the Group expanded into the insurance space in 2022 with the launch of Bubblegum, a digital-first insurtech brand. Bubblegum reflects the Group’s ongoing mission to provide not only expert advice and comparison tools, but also to push the boundaries to create financial products designed with the needs and preferences of today’s consumers. As part of the Group’s broader achievements, the launch of Bubblegum highlights MoneySmart Group’s continued commitment to shaping the future of personal finance across Singapore and Hong Kong SAR.

15 Years of Growth and Innovation

Vinod Nair, Founder and CEO, MoneySmart Group said, “Reaching our 15th anniversary is a significant milestone that speaks to the trust our customers, partners, employees and investors have placed in us. It’s a reminder of how far we have come from our early days. We started in 2009 with a dream to simplify the confusing world of personal finance and empower people to take charge of their financial futures as the first financial aggregator in the region. We’ve made great strides in bringing that to life but there’s so much more ahead.”

“Our approach has always been to stay focused on creating real value and driving long-term impact and growth. As we look to the future, we’re more determined than ever to push the boundaries of how financial products, knowledge and advice converge to guide consumers confidently,” said Nair.

Key Milestones Over the Past 15 Years

Expansion and Reach:

Grown from a small startup to a regional leader with a team size of over 140 across Singapore, Hong Kong SAR and remotely. This growth has been instrumental in supporting the Group’s ambitions to scale operations efficiently and effectively, and serve customers better.Achieved a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 34% in revenue from 2018 to 2023, demonstrating steady, long-term growth across the Group’s portfolio of brands.Attracted over 60 million visits to the MoneySmart platform in the last two years alone, establishing its position as one of the region’s most trusted personal finance platforms.Facilitated more than 750,000 transactions across credit cards, loans, insurance and investment products on MoneySmart Singapore and Hong Kong in the past two years. This milestone reflects the Group’s ability to provide high-value customer engagement across the financial ecosystem.Launched Bubblegum in 2022 which now covers travel, car and personal accident insurance. Bubblegum leverages MoneySmart’s extensive experience in understanding what consumers want and need to deliver desirable and value driven products and digital experience.

Customer Impact:

Launched SmartRewards on MoneySmart in 2023, providing members with flexibility and choice in how they are rewarded. The programme, which now features over 70 partner merchants, has processed more than 100 million points to date, offering members access to an ever-growing range of rewards from leading brands like Apple, Sony and Amazon. By putting the power of choice in the hands of customers, we’ve created a rewarding experience that aligns with their personal goals and preferences.Rolled out personalised recommendations in 2023, helping over 70,000 MoneySmart users across Singapore and Hong Kong SAR to date find the right credit cards, insurance and loan products tailored to their specific needs. By tailoring suggestions to individual needs, lifestyles and financial goals, we’ve made it easier for customers to discover relevant products and make confident and informed decisions.Published more than 5,000 articles across our moneysmart.sg and moneysmart.hk content platforms, building one of the most comprehensive financial knowledge hubs in the region. From budgeting tips to in-depth financial product comparisons, we’ve guided millions of consumers through complex financial decisions, helping them gain clarity and control over their financial futures.Achieved a Google Review rating of 4.4 in Singapore and 4.3 in Hong Kong SAR for MoneySmart, and a Trustpilot rating of 4.4 and Google Review rating of 4.3 for Bubblegum in 2024. These ratings reflect our ongoing commitment to delivering high levels of customer satisfaction across both markets and brands.

Partnerships and Collaborations:

Built strong relationships with over 120 financial institutions across banking, insurance and investment sectors. These partnerships enable the MoneySmart marketplace to feature a comprehensive range of products, solidifying the Group’s position as a trusted intermediary in the personal finance ecosystem.Played a pivotal role in driving customer acquisition for financial institutions by providing them with a platform to connect with consumers searching for personal finance products.

Positioning for the Future

Raymond Ong, Chief Financial Officer, MoneySmart Group added, “Our financial discipline and focus on operational excellence have been the backbone of our success over the years, allowing us to adapt and thrive in a competitive market. By managing resources wisely and staying committed to efficiency, we’ve created sustainable value for our stakeholders. As we continue to grow, we’re excited to explore new opportunities that will strengthen our position and continue empowering consumers with confidence and clarity to achieve their financial goals.”

About MoneySmart Group

MoneySmart Group is a leading personal finance group in Southeast Asia, encompassing two dynamic brands: MoneySmart and Bubblegum. Bringing together these brands to offer a comprehensive range of financial products, knowledge and advice, MoneySmart Group is dedicated to empowering consumers with clarity, confidence and control over their financial future.

MoneySmart serves as a financial marketplace and content platform for consumers to make informed decisions across a variety of banking, insurance and investment products. We do the hard work of compiling the information and sharing advice to make it easy for you to understand, compare and choose the best personal finance products for you. Our SmartRewards programme also enables customers to earn points on transactions that can be redeemed for rewards.

Under our Bubblegum brand, we create desirable insurance products and experiences, aiming to become the leading digital insurtech brand of the future.

For more information, please visit www.moneysmart.com.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Jasmine Hong
Communications Manager, MoneySmart Group
jasmine.hong@moneysmart.com

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/moneysmart-celebrates-15-years-of-empowering-consumers-through-smarter-financial-choices-302291515.html

SOURCE MoneySmart Group

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