SHANI DOWELL
Founder & CEO, Possip
Nashville, TN | possip.com | support@possip.com | linkedin.com/in/shani-dowell-59192b
BIO
Shani Dowell is the Founder and CEO of Possip, the organizational listening platform helping schools, districts, and organizations truly hear from the people they serve. A product of Houston public schools and a former public school math teacher and parent, Shani built Possip in 2017 to help school and district leaders have a better system to easily listen, learn, and act – and to give families an easy and accessible way to share their insight and experience.
She holds a BA from Howard University and an MBA from Stanford University. Shani began her career as a consultant at Bain & Company and helped launch the Boston office of the Posse Foundation. She has also held roles at Houston Independent School District, the KIPP Foundation, Teach For America, the Bridgespan Group, and Relay Graduate School of Education — experience that shapes Possip’s mission to make listening data-driven, simple, inclusive, and actionable.
ABOUT POSSIP
Possip is where schools and organizations go to win through the power of insights learned from their community. The Possip system and platform helps K-12 schools, higher ed institutions, nonprofits, and businesses gather and act on insights from the people closest to their work. Possip has partnered with more than 1,500 K-12 schools and has used its deep experience in education to expand into higher education, nonprofits, and business.
Possip’s Pulse Checks have proven predictive of staff and student retention as well as student achievement — turning routine feedback into a leading indicator organizations can strategically use.
In 2019, Shani became the first African American woman in Tennessee — and one of fewer than 60 Black women nationally — to raise over $1 million in venture funding, a milestone covered by USA Today, CNN, and Crunchbase News. Possip has since raised additional funding to scale its impact.
RECOGNITION & MEDIA
- Nashville Business Journal — named a Most Admired CEO
- Nasdaq “Faces of Entrepreneurship” feature
- Winner, Google for Startups Women Accelerator & Black Founder Fund
- Winner, Nashville Entrepreneur Center Next Awards; Entrepreneur Center board member
- Guest, TED Business podcast
- Guest columnist, The Tennessean
- Featured in CNN, USA Today, EdSurge, The 74, Education Dive, Crunchbase News, and Black Enterprise
QUOTE
“I wanted to build a positive bridge between parents and schools that was founded on trust, learning, feedback, and transparency.”
