Parallel Learning strives to make developmental services more accessible to all families.
Update 10/14: A previous version of this story misstated some of Heldfond’s background. It has been corrected.
San Francisco native Diana Heldfond was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD early on in life. The latter diagnosis came when she was in middle school, and she was privileged to reap the benefits that come with early intervention and gaining access to specialists and other resources. After graduating high school, Heldfond attended Georgetown University in Washington DC, where she earned a degree in science technology and international affairs.
Despite her learning disabilities, Heldfond thinks she exceeded expectations, telling me in an interview conducted over videoconference late last month she feels she “ended up doing doing pretty well.” While at Georgetown, she started a technology company that would presage her current one. Heldfond is currently chief executive at Parallel Learning, an education startup that focuses on helping students with learning disabilities succeed in the classroom and beyond. On its website, the company promises they can give students the tools to “unlock your brain’s potential” and to get “world-class results without confusion or excessive cost.” Parallel is geared towards K-12 students, with some older students as well.
For Heldfond and Parallel, the need is clear: 1 in 5, or 20%, of the population copes with some sort of learning disability. Moreover, the support Heldfond received during her educational career isn’t the norm for everyone. Not all students have access to the wealth of resources she had, but that doesn’t mean they’re undeserving of attention. They need the resources made easily accessible.
Parallel was a way for Heldfond to share her privilege by democratizing it.
“I was extremely motivated by this mission [founding the company] to ultimately make my own reality more of a reality for more students across America,” she said.
Parallel’s founding fortuitously coincided with the pandemic’s reliance upon distance learning for instruction. Heldfond explained she and her team became acutely aware of the challenges virtual learning can have on students and staff—this is especially true for many in special education, whose entire learning model normally thrives on direct, in-the-flesh interaction. “I think it’s fair to say that special ed students in particular were disproportionately affected, [in the sense] that teachers are frantically trying to figure out how to book general education classrooms online,” Heldfond said. “It couldn’t cross their mind at that time—how you put a lot of specialized services and so on [and transition it] online.”
Parallel has been operating for two years now, during which time the company has built what Heldfond described as a “developmental ecosystem of providers” who provide services entirely virtually. These providers serve students with a myriad of learning disabilities, as well as offering executive function coaching. That said, Heldfond was crystal clear in emphasizing Parallel does not offer autism-centric services like applied behavior analysis, colloquially known as ABA. Parallel concentrates on what Heldfond calls their “five core services”: assessment, executive function coaching, speech and language therapy, behavioral therapy, and skills-based tutoring. The value proposition is high too, as Heldfond said families can spend thousands of dollars in procuring such services for their children; many sit on waitlists for months at a time, as long as six-to-eight in some cases. With Parallel, Heldfond said, families have the ability to “mix and match” services in an effort to “build a care team around their child’s unique needs so that we can make sure that they’re successful both in the classroom and in real life.”
Of course, technology is the foundation on which Parallel (and others) build their business. There can be no substitute for in-person instruction on many levels, particularly with students with more severe disabilities enrolled in special day classes, but the internet brings with it a cornucopia of advantages all its own. The key to success, according to Heldfond, is translation. It’s imperative to identify the parts of the educational experience that have the best analogues in the online realm. Moreover, it’s equally important to strive for outcomes that otherwise would be impossible in more traditional environments. With technology, it’s easier to collect data and create fuller evidence-based plans for students; these can be be measured against students’ peers in Parallel’s network. The familial aspect is the “clinical baseline” that Heldfond said acts as the basic structure for the entire experience. The baseline lays the track on which a historical timeline is plotted; it follows students from the very beginning all through school and beyond.
All these products from Parallel are delivered using the company’s proprietary platform. Heldfond cited the tele-assessments as one example, telling me her team partnered with some of the largest test publishers to build an infrastructure whereby Parallel could host the one-to-one interaction between clinician and student, while simultaneously having access to comprehensive assessment tools like the Woodcock-Johnson. The technological components to Parallel’s services ultimately benefit students and families, as the startup’s technical chops allow for efficiency. The faster and smoother an assessment takes place, and data taken, the sooner results are nicely packaged and shared with families in a digestible format.
“I do think that our virtual services and being a telehealth platform allows us to actually really do a lot of really innovative things to increase the quality of education versus a traditional clinic setting,” Heldfond said.
She added: “In our unique industry, it comes down to virtual or nothing in many cases, because there literally is no in-person physical provider who’s able to go serve all students that ultimately need these services. [It goes back] to our core mission, which is making sure that as many students as possible who need these resources have access to them. I feel like virtual is really the most obvious solution. And I know it's something that's incredibly important to many other folks on our team like Dr. Wright, [Jordan Wright Parallel’s chief clinical officer]—the main reason that he has done all the research, trying to equate the norms of virtual testing and in-person testing is exactly to increase accessibility to our resources.”
Feedback-wise, Parallel has been a savior for parents looking for help.
“A lot of families that are navigating this world [online education] for the first time are scattered, they’re stressed [and] looking for answers and don’t know where to start. I think that’s one of the most empowering parts about the parallel platform,” Heldfond told me. “And the way that we ultimately provide our services is that, because we take the full-prep child approach, and we have so many services under our umbrella and so many incredible providers, we can really be a first point of first solution for families, [and] help them navigate their child’s unique needs and help them find the right provider within our network to help them really thrive. [We] think that value proposition to families is incredibly beneficial.”
Heldfond added the feedback is positive, and she’s excited for Parallel’s future in terms of new products. There’s a lot working in the company’s pipeline, including building relationships with larger clients like school districts. She conceded there’s “a long way to go” for them to realize their goals, but that their progress is encouraging. In the long run, it’s Heldfond’s sincere hope to see Parallel cement itself in the industry as the go-to place for high quality developmental services.
