Jeanette Haren: A Passion for Education

Jeanette Haren, CEO of Truenorthlogic, got her start in computers when her parents purchased an Atari 400 in the 1980s. “We could write little basic programs on it,” Haren says. “It was fun writing code.”

Haren graduated from the University of Utah in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and was working full-time for Evans and Sutherland, a computer graphics corporation, while in college. She was also in the military reserves to help pay for her education; her parents had seven children so the family’s budget was tight.

Haren later joined Utah Education Network (UEN) to manage the organization’s software team. Under her direction, the team designed and wrote all of the original software for UEN including the video switching software for the EdNET system, which was Utah’s original interactive video distance learning network.

“It’s just been a really fun journey,” she says. “I really do think writing software for education is what I was meant to do.”

Haren launched Truenorthlogic in 2000. The company produces a technology platform that enables K-12 teachers to assess themselves and be aligned with professional development opportunities for improving on areas of need.

“We started with wanting to help teachers become better teachers,” Haren says. “It has evolved from a teacher self-diagnostic, which was teachers doing self-evaluation, to professional growth development and tracking, to full-blown high-stakes evaluation and performance management.”

Truenorthlogic runs the software for the school districts that use the program; the company is the application service provider so they setup the software based on district processes and run it in Rackspace data centers. Truenorthlogic has helped some of the nation’s largest districts, including Chicago Public Schools, Miami Dade and Los Angeles.