Three days at the AWS Social Entrepreneur Accelerator gave SchoolSims greater clarity about its evolution from a simulation provider into a 360-degree professional-learning platform. CEO Brian Biddulph-Krentar shares how the experience sharpened the company’s AI roadmap, renewed his builder’s mindset, and inspired immediate investment in team development.
I arrived at the AWS Social Entrepreneur Accelerator with a business plan. I left with something more important: greater clarity about what SchoolSims is becoming, how quickly we need to move, and what my role must be in helping our team get there.
The three-day accelerator, held at the AWS Skills Center and Amazon offices in Arlington, brought together nonprofit and for-profit social-impact organizations working in climate, education, and healthcare. Participants came from around the world and represented organizations at different stages of growth.
We were joined by AWS leaders and specialists from Skilling and Social Impact, AI for Good, Solutions Architecture, Cloud Financial Management, intellectual property, credits, partnerships, and communications, as well as strategy professionals from Deloitte.
The diversity of perspectives in the room mattered. We were not simply discussing technology. We were examining how technology, capital, partnerships, evidence, and organizational capacity must work together if a mission-driven organization wants to create impact at scale.
SchoolSims entered the program at a somewhat different stage of commercial and product development than many organizations in the cohort.
We already serve approximately 210 clients and generated roughly 350,000 simulation plays during the past year, representing approximately 31.5 million minutes of practice, decision-making, reflection, and professional learning.
We also arrived with an AI Coaching capability in alpha with four clients and a draft 12-month business and technology roadmap.
At the same time, the accelerator occurred at the end of our first quarter and during one of our most important selling months. I had to step out of several sessions to support the business. That tension was instructive: growing companies must deliver today while still making room to build what comes next.
Throughout the program, we examined responsible AI, cloud architecture and economics, product-market fit, financing, impact measurement, partnerships, intellectual property, and organizational skills.
The larger lesson was not any single session. It was seeing how these elements fit together.
A successful AI strategy is not simply about choosing a model or building another feature. It requires a clear business purpose, measurable outcomes, responsible safeguards, an organization capable of supporting the technology, and partners who can help accelerate the work.
I did not leave believing that SchoolSims needed an entirely new plan. I left believing that we needed to move faster, communicate our purpose more clearly, and invest more intentionally in the people responsible for executing it.
For years, SchoolSims has helped educators, school leaders, counselors, and workforce learners practice difficult decisions in a safe environment. That remains the foundation of our work, but it no longer captures the full value we are building.
We increasingly see SchoolSims as a 360-degree professional-learning platform that connects:
Realistic practice
Reflection and conversation
Personalized AI Coaching
Professional-development recommendations
Standards-aligned analysis
Organizational insight
Measurable impact
This represents an important shift in how we think and talk about the company.
We are not simply providing simulations. We are building a practice infrastructure—an environment in which people can make decisions, experience consequences, reflect on their reasoning, receive coaching, identify development needs, and apply what they learned in real situations.
Our mission, vision, and key messaging must evolve to communicate that broader purpose.
Our new—and soon-to-be-enhanced—AI Coaching capability is central to this vision.
Schools are facing staff shortages, leadership turnover, budget constraints, and competing priorities. These pressures often reduce the time and resources available for individualized coaching and professional development precisely when educators need that support most.
AI Coaching gives participants an opportunity to reflect on their simulation experience, examine their decisions, consider alternative perspectives, and identify practical next steps.
It is not intended to replace human mentors, instructional coaches, or school leaders. It is designed to extend their capacity and make meaningful reflection more accessible and scalable.
The intended path to impact is straightforward.
Better access to practice and reflection can strengthen educator preparedness. Better-prepared educators are more likely to make sound decisions and feel supported in their roles. Over time, stronger development and support can contribute to improved educator quality, greater retention, and better outcomes for students.
Our responsibility is to validate that impact carefully. We must move beyond counting participation and consistently measure changes in confidence, preparedness, decision quality, application, retention, and organizational outcomes.
One of the most ambitious goals in our roadmap is the creation of participant-selected language and culturally responsive simulation experiences.
This is much more complicated than translating written text.
A fully localized simulation may require us to dynamically adapt video, voice and audio, captions, images, on-screen text, buttons, prompts, scenarios, character interactions, AI Coaching, and feedback. Every component must remain consistent with the others while preserving the educational purpose of the experience.
Cultural adaptations must be developed and validated with representative educators and communities. The technology should not infer a participant’s ethnicity or personalize behavior based on ethnicity. The objective is to provide accurate, respectful, client-selected localization—not to reinforce stereotypes.
Achieving this responsibly will require thoughtful architecture, content versioning, model and prompt design, human review, evaluation standards, and strong safeguards.
This is also an area where AWS expertise, technology, and implementation partners could help SchoolSims accelerate development while building the foundation correctly.
The most immediate evidence of SEA’s impact happened after the formal sessions ended.
That evening, I returned to my hotel and built a new internal tool to help upskill our team. I also began organizing an in-person team training session so we could turn what I learned into shared capabilities and action.
It was a relatively small project, but it captured the spirit of what I took from the accelerator: move faster, build smarter, and strengthen the team as we go.
The experience reminded me that leadership is not only about establishing a strategy or managing the current quarter. It is also about creating an environment in which people can learn, experiment, and execute with confidence.
Personally, SEA reconnected me with the builder’s mindset. It made me want to test ideas more quickly, use AI more practically, and give our team better tools—not simply ask them to do more.
It also reinforced that our next stage will not come from one product feature or one large customer. It will come from connecting product innovation, employee development, customer evidence, responsible technology, strategic partnerships, and a clearer story.
Our updated 12-month plan focuses on several connected priorities:
Improving and scaling AI Coaching
Creating AI-generated professional-development guides
Analyzing responses against instructional frameworks and professional standards
Accelerating simulation creation while maintaining educational quality
Developing multilingual and culturally responsive experiences
Expanding from departmental purchases to enterprise and state-level relationships
Strengthening our AWS architecture, security, accessibility, reliability, and cost management
Building a more consistent impact-measurement strategy
We came to SEA prepared. We left challenged, energized, and more ambitious about what SchoolSims can become.
Our long-term goal is to give educators, leaders, counselors, and workforce learners a safe place to practice before the consequences are real—and then connect that practice to reflection, coaching, action, and measurable improvement.
Experience may be the best teacher. Our responsibility is to make that experience accessible, meaningful, and capable of improving what happens next.
I am grateful to the AWS Social Entrepreneur Accelerator team, the AWS specialists who generously shared their expertise, the Deloitte professionals who challenged our thinking, and the participating organizations that openly shared their experiences.
The relationships, questions, and ideas from these three days will continue influencing SchoolSims—and me—well beyond the accelerator.
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SchoolSims provides dynamic, simulation-based professional development for educators and school leaders in public, private, and independent schools, as well as for future educators in colleges and universities. Our simulations present real-world leadership challenges through interactive, decision-based scenarios, leveraging AI-driven insights and live-action elements. By engaging in these experiences, learners refine their decision-making skills, bridge the gap between theory and practice, and enhance their ability to lead in complex educational environments.