Marilyn Mosley Gordanier is an American educator, speaker, author, and founder of the Laurel Springs School. She is known for creating the first online K-12 school in the United States, Japan, and Korea. In 1996, the Today Show'sBryant Gumble deemed the Laurel Springs School the "wave of the future." She is an advocate for girl's education worldwide and co-founded Educate Girls Now to raise awareness of the dire conditions of underprivileged Afghanistan girls and to ensure they receive an education and are not forced into early marriage.
Career
Mosley Gordanier founded Laurel Springs School in 1991. Laurel Springs was the first online school in the United States and has since become the largest provider of personalized online education, serving over 85,000 students in grades K through 12. In 1995, Mosley Gordanier co-founded Mother of Divine Grace, a Catholic distance education school that serves over 6,000 students per year. In 2001, she cofounded Eikoh Web Internet High School, the first distance-learning program in Tokyo, Japan and Laurel Springs/C2 Korea, the first online learning program in South Korea. Laurel Springs School received the United NationsGlobal 500 Award in 1991 and the President's Youth Environmental Award in 1997. In 2010, she received the Outstanding Leadership by an Individual in the Field of Distance Learning, from the United States Distance Learning Association. She designed the first online environmental curricula, Kids4earth and Leaders4earth, for which she was awarded Outstanding Service to Environmental Educationfrom the North American Association of Environmental Education. Her board memberships include Educate Girls Now, the Global 500 Environmental Forum, Education Chair for the Captain Planet Foundations, and Secretary of the United States Association of the Club of Rome. She also serves as Educational Advisor for Global Schools Without Walls which educates refugee children in France. She also serves as a blogger for The Huffington Post.
