Richard Culatta is a national leader in educational innovation. As the Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, his focus is around innovations that lead to personalized learning and improve access to education for all Americans.

He leads initiatives around competency-based learning, open educational data (aka Datapalooza), innovation clusters and entrepreneur outreach. 

His experience in the federal government also includes serving as an educational policy advisor to U.S. Senator Patty Murray and leading the development of a worldwide online learning program for the Central Intelligence Agency. Prior to his work in the federal government, Culatta was the education lead for a game design startup, Director of Operations for the Rose Education Foundation and learning technologies advisor at Brigham Young University.

He recently launched EdStartup 101, a massive open online course (MOOC) to support new educational entrepreneurs in developing the next generations of apps and services for teachers and learners.