After the corps, Lani Luo (Chicago ‘13) continued to teach in Chicago and later joined pilotED Schools for seven years. She is now the co-founder and chief operating officer at Reportwell, a TFA alumni-led tech start-up creating systems to support educators and schools in building simple, streamlined compliance systems. We asked Lani to reflect on her experience and motivations for launching a start-up.

Q: Can you tell us about your journey from founding your first school to where you are today? What were some key milestones along the way?

When we initially proposed Bethel Park Elementary, I was constantly told that I was too young and inexperienced. Over time, these outside opinions started to influence my own thinking. Realizing I had no time to indulge in self-doubt, I committed myself to learning everything I could about being both a school founder and an operations leader. 

After successfully founding and running our first school, I took on a new role as Chief Operating Officer at the pilotED Foundation. Although this was a remarkable career step, it was a challenging transition since my sense of identity was deeply tied to my role as Director of Business and Operations at Bethel Park Elementary. The only way to move forward was to dive into the next challenge—opening our second school, Cactus Park Elementary, in Las Vegas.

With experience from the first school, launching the second one felt like déjà vu, even though the two landscapes were entirely different. The systems I’d built for the first school provided a roadmap, guiding us through a variety of challenges, and we successfully opened our second school.

At this point, I was supporting both schools as efficiently as I could, but I was bogged down by tedious reporting, complex paperwork, and arbitrary compliance requirements. Instead of focusing on improving our internal processes, I was drowning in documentation. I knew this struggle was common across the school operations field, and that existing solutions fell short. With my team, I set out to build a tool to solve our problem.

Q: In what ways have you been able to leverage Teach For America’s network throughout your career?

TFA was the launchpad for my career in education. Without TFA, Bethel Park Elementary, Cactus Park Elementary, pilotED Foundation, and Reportwell wouldn’t exist. The friends I met through TFA became my lifelong support system. These are the people I navigated the challenges of a first-year teacher with, traveled the world alongside, and ultimately built schools and organizations with. They are the foundation of the two schools, pilotED Foundation and Reportwell. Put simply, TFA brought these incredible people into my life, and for that, I’m endlessly grateful.

Q: How has your experience in education shaped your understanding of the need for streamlined processes, and how has it shaped your approach to solving problems using technology?

The inefficiencies in our systems became glaringly obvious when I took on the role of Founding Director of Business and Operations at our Indianapolis school. On top of human resources, facilities, financial management, and technology, I was also responsible for over 200 reports across 15 submission portals covering student data, compliance, and grant management. The guidance for these submissions was often confusing, fragmented, and outdated.

Out of necessity, I built a customized tracker in Google Sheets to consolidate all reporting requirements in one place. The impact of that simple tool became the foundation for what is now Reportwell. My Co-Founders and I saw the potential to build something bigger, a platform that could give other school leaders and agency leaders the same efficiency and control I gained from my spreadsheet. With Reportwell, we’ve expanded that original concept into a robust tool that streamlines reporting and compliance processes, helping schools everywhere regain time and capacity.



Q: What excites you most about the potential impact of your ed-tech company on schools and educators?

Having spent years in the trenches of school operations, grappling with compliance and reporting demands, I understand the time and energy these tasks consume.

That’s why I’m incredibly proud to be building Reportwell, a platform designed to streamline how schools work with governmental agencies. With Reportwell, school leaders will be able to navigate hundreds of reports with a single click, delegate reports easily, retain institutional knowledge, and submit all their documents in one place, among many other features.

This isn’t just about new technology; it’s about giving time and capacity back to school leaders so they can focus on what truly matters—supporting students.