Matthew Pittinsky is an American technology entrepreneur , educator and academic . He is the CEO of Parchment and a co-founder of Blackboard Inc . Pittinsky is also affiliated with Arizona State University as an assistant research professor .
The youngest of four children, Matthew Pittinsky grew up in a family of educators. [1] [2] His father worked as a university administrator , and was the president of the local school board. [3] [4] Pittinsky's mother was a teacher at a public elementary school . [5]
As a child, Pittinsky was interested in technology and used his family's Atari 800 computer to program in BASIC and later learned to program on an Atari 1040st . [1] [6] [7] He was also active in Boy Scouts , earning the rank of Eagle Scout . [8] Pittinsky wanted to become a teacher from an early age, [4] [9] though he initially struggled as a student and had to repeat failed classes in summer school . [10] After high school, he attended American University with the goal of becoming a social studies teacher