Denis Ocampo

Denis Ocampo is a Partner at BetterEd Solutions specializing in school partnerships, education technology, digital transformation, and the practical adoption of technology that helps schools operate and serve students more effectively. A former New York City public school educator, education technology founder, and K–12 partnerships leader, Ocampo brings a perspective that is unusually valuable in a sector where schools are often asked to purchase increasingly sophisticated technology without enough support determining whether the tool actually solves the right problem.

Ocampo’s career sits at the intersection of education, technology, entrepreneurship, and school-facing partnerships. He understands the classroom because he has worked as an educator. He understands education technology because he has built a company in the space. And he understands how districts and schools evaluate, purchase, implement, and sustain technology because he has spent years working directly with education organizations as a partnership professional.

That combination shapes his work at BetterEd. Ocampo helps schools move beyond the question, “What technology should we buy?” toward more important questions: What problem are we trying to solve? Which system or tool best addresses that problem? How will it integrate with the school’s existing processes? Who owns implementation? How will educators be trained? What evidence will show whether adoption is working? And how do we ensure technology reduces complexity rather than creating another disconnected platform for staff to manage?

Ocampo currently works in K–12 partnerships with Timely, an education technology company focused on school scheduling. His work gives him direct exposure to one of the most operationally consequential technology challenges schools face: translating instructional priorities, staffing constraints, courses, interventions, student needs, and organizational requirements into schedules that actually work. This experience strengthens his ability to help school leaders think about technology as an operating system for better execution rather than as a collection of stand-alone products.

Before Timely, Ocampo spent several years working with Ellevation Education, a technology platform designed to help schools and districts support multilingual learners. Public procurement records identify him as a school-facing representative on Ellevation platform, strategies, implementation, data, and training services. That experience required him to understand district needs, communicate the value of technical solutions to education leaders, navigate school and district decision-making, and connect technology adoption to the instructional and compliance realities faced by educators serving English learners.

His education technology expertise is also entrepreneurial. Ocampo co-founded and led OutboxEDU, an education technology startup designed to create more engaging online learning experiences through game-based, active, interdisciplinary, and self-paced learning. The platform was originally conceived in response to challenges Ocampo observed among non-native English speakers and students who were not being adequately served by conventional educational systems. As founder, he worked at the intersection of product vision, learning design, technology, market development, educator needs, partnerships, and organizational strategy.

That founder experience matters to BetterEd because it gives Ocampo insight into both sides of the education technology relationship. He understands what vendors are trying to build and sell, but he also understands what schools actually need. He can therefore help education leaders distinguish between compelling marketing and meaningful utility, evaluate products against organizational priorities, ask stronger implementation questions, and establish partnerships that are more likely to produce value for students and adults.

Ocampo’s technology work is grounded in direct experience with underserved school communities. His earlier work in the New York City public school system exposed him to disparities in resources, student opportunity, and access to effective learning experiences. That perspective has remained central to his work in technology: innovation matters only to the extent that it expands capacity, improves learning or operations, and helps schools serve students more equitably.

At BetterEd Solutions, Ocampo leads and supports school partnership and education technology strategy across the firm’s school improvement, transformation, and growth work. He helps schools assess their existing technology ecosystems, identify gaps and redundancies, evaluate potential solutions, connect technology decisions to school-improvement priorities, and build implementation plans that make adoption manageable for educators and leaders.

His work can span instructional technology, scheduling, student data systems, multilingual learner supports, customer relationship management, communications, workflow automation, artificial intelligence, assessment platforms, learning management systems, and other digital tools that influence the effectiveness of a modern school organization. Rather than prescribing a standard technology stack, Ocampo helps leaders determine what the organization actually needs at its current stage of development.

Ocampo is also a strong partnership builder. He understands how to develop relationships with school executives, principals, district leaders, technology providers, founders, vendors, and other stakeholders whose collaboration can accelerate organizational improvement. In BetterEd engagements, that means helping schools identify strategic partners, structure productive vendor relationships, evaluate fit, negotiate implementation expectations, and ensure that external partnerships support rather than distract from the school’s core transformation agenda.

This capability is particularly relevant to schools experiencing rapid growth. As organizations expand, informal systems that worked at smaller scale often become unreliable. Scheduling becomes more complex. Communication becomes fragmented. Data live in multiple places. Leadership teams spend increasing amounts of time reconciling information manually. New staff need faster onboarding. Families expect stronger digital communication. Technology decisions that once felt optional become central to the organization’s ability to execute.

Ocampo helps leaders recognize that inflection point and build systems deliberately. His approach is not technology for technology’s sake. It is the use of technology to create organizational leverage: reducing administrative burden, improving visibility, strengthening coordination, making information more accessible, and allowing leaders and educators to spend more time on work that directly affects students.

He is also well positioned to help schools navigate emerging artificial intelligence tools. Education organizations are increasingly being approached with AI products promising efficiency, personalization, data analysis, lesson support, communications, and automation. Ocampo helps leaders evaluate those tools through the lens of actual school needs, implementation readiness, staff adoption, workflow design, privacy, and measurable value. The goal is to ensure that innovation strengthens professional judgment and organizational capacity rather than becoming another initiative with weak implementation.

At BetterEd, Ocampo’s school-partnership work also supports the firm’s growth strategy. Because he understands both school leaders and education technology organizations, he can help BetterEd develop relationships across districts, charter schools, education networks, technology companies, and strategic partners. He brings a consultative approach to partnerships: understanding the problem first, determining whether there is genuine alignment, and building relationships around solutions that create mutual value.

Ocampo’s entrepreneurial experience reinforces that mindset. Building an education technology company required him to operate without the certainty of an established playbook, test ideas against actual user needs, communicate a vision, refine products in response to feedback, and build partnerships around an emerging solution. Those are many of the same capabilities schools need when they are redesigning systems, launching new programs, or attempting significant organizational transformation.

Within BetterEd’s broader team, Ocampo provides a distinct capability. BetterEd’s instructional experts can identify what teaching and learning should look like. Its transformation leaders can design stronger management systems. Its data experts can identify what performance evidence is showing. Ocampo helps ensure the technology and external partnerships surrounding those systems enable the work rather than constrain it.

At BetterEd Solutions, Ocampo contributes to the organization’s vision of transforming schools in our nation’s most underserved communities into happier, healthier, higher-performing places where every child can thrive. His role is to help schools use technology intelligently, build stronger partnerships, and create digital and operational systems capable of supporting improvement at scale.