Valerie Quirk, GED'23
Education Entrepreneurship, M.S.Ed.
Valerie Quirk currently serves as the Executive Director of Post Pigeon EDU, a nonprofit organization she founded during her time at Penn in the Education Entrepreneurship program. The organization connects classrooms to National Park Rangers across the country for free, through personalized video postcards answering student questions. Before running Post Pigeon, she spent much of her career at TED on the TED-Education team where she helped students in over 130 countries share their best ideas. A lifelong adventurer, she has also sailed around the world twice with Semester at Sea and spent a year driving from New York to South America in a van, taking classrooms along with her. Valerie is excited everyday to help turn student curiosity into real-world learning connections and improve access to some of our most treasured places.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment?
As an entrepreneur, the goal post for success continually moves, but one moment that sticks in my memory is the first “real” customer we had sign up for the educational program I started during my time at Penn. Someone not in our network, friends, or family – that first classroom that found us organically or through word of mouth and was excited to participate. There are always early day doubts about whether what you are building brings real value to the world, but having a complete stranger be enthusiastic about what you are creating is a really incredible feeling that I don’t take for granted.
How has GSE influenced your professional path?
The Education Entrepreneurship program at Penn GSE has helped me chart a new path in my life as an entrepreneur, something I had previously only ever dreamed of. Penn GSE helped me see how all the different experiences, passions, and skills I’d gathered over my life were not only connected, but building on each other and setting me up for success in my own venture.
What was the best part of your GSE education?
If I had to sum up the best part of my GSE education, it would be community and accountability. At Penn GSE I was placed in a cohort of people who are experts in their fields, lifelong learners, dreamers, innovators, and have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place through education. A community of people eager to learn, listen, connect, and contribute; give honest feedback but also unwavering support as you try. The community at GSE created an incredible place for both personal and professional growth. Beyond that, acting on your ideas, building, and real-world implementation is the foundation of the Education Entrepreneurship program at Penn GSE. In other words, at Penn GSE, you don’t just study pedagogy, you implement it, you don’t just learn about what “customer discovery” is, you do it, you don’t just talk about ideas, you bring them to life. Penn empowered me to dive head first into a new idea but also held me accountable to follow through.
Is there anything you'd like to tell us about that we didn't ask?
Penn GSE was ultimately the launching pad for my organization Post Pigeon EDU. I came into the Education Entrepreneurship program unclear on what I wanted to build, but sure that I wanted to create something with impact in education. Penn GSE forces you to be introspective about what you believe in, test what you are capable of, and commit to being a humble, lifelong learner in an increasingly complex world. At Penn, in this action-oriented learning environment, I was lucky enough to launch Post Pigeon EDU, an education nonprofit I continue to run to this day. Post Pigeon EDU (postpigeonedu.org) is a free program which connects K-12 classrooms with National Park Rangers across the country through personalized video messages.
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