Katy Schmitt is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Education Partners, a Nashville-based education company she built from the ground up in 2018. A former classroom teacher and Teach For America alumna, Katy went on to work with the Tennessee Department of Education before channeling her passion for teacher quality and student outcomes into building Thrive—a nationally-recognized personalized education management company serving thousands of families and students across the country. Katy has spent years teaching entrepreneurship to students of all ages, bringing a combination of classroom expertise and real-world business experience to her instruction. She is deeply passionate about helping young people discover their entrepreneurial voice, understand how value gets created and exchanged in the world, and develop the confidence to turn their ideas into something real. When she’s not leading her team or teaching, Katy is working on the next iteration of Thrive—refining, scaling, and finding new ways to bring Thrive’s mission to more families across the country. She believes the entrepreneurial mindset doesn’t stop after the first idea—it compounds. Every problem solved is an invitation to build something better, and that continuous cycle of creating, problem-solving, and refining is at the heart of everything she teaches.