Berj Akian

Founder and CEO ClassLink

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Berj Akian founded ClassLink in 1998 and still runs it, which in education technology is close to unheard of. The company solves an unglamorous but structurally important problem: a school district may license dozens of digital products, each with its own accounts, passwords and enrolment data, and the friction of getting a student into the right resource consumes teaching time and generates a permanent administrative burden. ClassLink provides the identity and access management layer underneath — single sign-on, automated rostering and account provisioning, and analytics showing which licensed resources are actually being used. It now reaches more than 21 million students and educators across all fifty US states and 36 countries. Akian has paired the commercial work with sector-level contribution, leading the vision behind a K-12 Cybersecurity Rubric aligned to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and with an unusual personal commitment to study — he holds advanced degrees in instructional design, cognitive science and learning analytics, and completed a doctorate in cognitive science shortly before CoSN named him its 2026 Hurley Private Sector Champion.

Career Highlights

• Founded ClassLink in 1998 and has led it as Chief Executive Officer for close to three decades.
• Grew the platform to more than 21 million students and educators across all fifty US states and 36 countries.
• Built the company around identity and access management for schools — single sign-on, rostering, account provisioning and usage analytics.
• Led the vision behind the K-12 Cybersecurity Rubric, aligned to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and made available to school systems.
• Received CoSN’s 2026 Hurley Private Sector Champion Award, presented in Chicago on 13 April 2026.
• Earned a doctorate in cognitive science while running the company, following earlier graduate work in instructional design and learning analytics.
• Previously worked as an associate at Technology Crossover Ventures and in restructuring and attest services at Arthur Andersen.

Professional Journey

Akian’s background before ClassLink was financial rather than educational. He worked in restructuring and attest services at Arthur Andersen, then as an associate at Technology Crossover Ventures — an accounting-and-investing route into technology rather than an engineering or teaching one. He founded ClassLink in 1998, at the point where American schools were first putting significant numbers of computers into classrooms and discovering that the administrative overhead of doing so scaled faster than the educational benefit.

The problem ClassLink addresses has, if anything, worsened since. A district today licenses a large portfolio of digital content and applications, each with separate credentials, separate enrolment requirements and separate data about who is in which class. The cost of that fragmentation is borne by teachers in lost instructional minutes and by district IT staff in provisioning work that has to be redone every term. ClassLink’s answer is an identity and access layer: single sign-on so a student authenticates once, automated rostering so class lists flow from the student information system into every application, account provisioning that happens without manual intervention, and analytics that tell administrators which of the products they are paying for are actually being opened.

That last capability is commercially and politically significant in a sector where procurement decisions are made with public money and increasingly have to be defended. Districts using ClassLink can see usage rather than assume it. The platform’s reach — more than 21 million students and educators, every US state, 36 countries — reflects how generic the underlying problem is once a school system passes a certain size.

Akian’s contribution outside the company has been concentrated on security. He led the vision behind the K-12 Cybersecurity Rubric, a self-assessment instrument aligned to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and aimed at school systems, which typically lack both dedicated security staff and any framework scaled to their circumstances. Ransomware against school districts has made this urgent, and a sector-specific translation of NIST is a materially useful thing to have put into the commons. CoSN, the Consortium for School Networking, cited that work alongside his sustained support for the association when it presented him with the 2026 Hurley Private Sector Champion Award at its annual conference in Chicago on 13 April 2026. The award goes to one individual a year for impact on the education technology community beyond their professional role, and CoSN’s chief executive Keith Krueger singled out his curiosity and dedication to lifelong learning.

That last point is not merely a compliment. While running the company, Akian accumulated advanced degrees in instructional design, cognitive science and learning analytics, completing a doctorate in cognitive science shortly before the award — an unusual investment for a chief executive of a company at this scale, and one that connects the commercial business back to the question of how students actually learn.

Education

Baruch College

Bachelor’s degree, cum laude.

Akian also holds advanced degrees in instructional design, cognitive science and learning analytics, culminating in a recently completed doctorate in cognitive science. The awarding institutions for these graduate degrees are not named in any public source found, and are therefore not recorded above.