Two leaders of Toronto-based online education firm Top Hat have both recently departed, BetaKit has learned.
Top Hat CEO Joe Rohrlich and CRO Matt Schurk have both recently been removed from the Top Hat website’s team page. A source indicated to BetaKit that their departures were communicated to the company in a January 2 announcement. The reasons for Rohrlich and Schurk’s departures remain unclear.
The reasons for Rohrlich and Schurk’s departures remain unclear.
While Rohrlich’s LinkedIn profile has not yet been updated—and still lists him as Top Hat CEO—Schurk’s own indicates that he left Top Hat this month and has since taken on a new role as chief sales officer at Texas delivery software provider Auctane.
BetaKit has reached out to Top Hat, Rohrlich, Schurk, and Top Hat investors Inovia Capital and Georgian Partners, which both hold seats on the company’s board, for comment.
Top Hat sells courseware used by over 24,000 educators and three million students across more than 750 North American colleges and universities. In recent years, some of its work has focused on acquiring conventional publishers as it looks to digitize the textbook business.
These leadership changes come about five months after BetaKit reported that Top Hat laid off 42 employees, or less than 10 percent of its team, as part of a “workforce optimization initiative” in August 2023.
“Optimizing our workforce positions us to invest our resources in strategies and innovation that have the highest impact on value for our customers and growth for the business,” a Top Hat spokesperson told BetaKit at the time.
Shortly after that, Top Hat appointed former Ancestry finance leader Curtis Tripoli as CFO.
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Recently, a part of the company’s focus has been on incorporating generative artificial intelligence to help improve the teaching and learning experience for faculty and students.
Top Hat most recently closed a $130-million USD Series E round in early 2021 at a half-a-billion valuation from longtime backer Georgian Partners.
Rohrlich was Top Hat founding CEO Mike Silagadze’s “handpicked successor.” He assumed leadership of the company shortly after the firm’s Series E financing, taking over for Silagadze, who remains on Top Hat’s board.
Before joining Top Hat, Rohrlich worked for more than a decade with Texas-based marketing software firm Bazaarvoice. As Bazaarvoice CRO, Rohrlich helped grow the company’s revenue from $30 million to more than $300 million.
For his part, Schurk was also a former leader at Bazaarvoice, spending eight years there, most recently as VP of sales and client success. He joined Top Hat as CRO in July 2021.
Feature image courtesy Top Hat.
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Originally published on BetaKit : Original article