Joseph Connor

Founder & CEO Odyssey

Last Reviewed: September 25, 2026

Executive Summary

Joseph Connor is the founder and chief executive of Odyssey, a New York company that runs school choice programmes for U.S. states. Legislatures create education savings accounts and similar grants; Odyssey builds and operates the system that checks each family’s eligibility, releases the funds, runs a closed marketplace of approved schools and vendors, and handles support. A former charter school teacher who went to Notre Dame Law School and then practised as an education lawyer, Connor started Odyssey in 2021. By mid-2026 eight states were using its platform, and it had taken on its largest contract to date: the $1 billion Texas Education Freedom Accounts. The company’s work in some states has also drawn scrutiny from auditors and reporters.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Odyssey since 2021; the company says it was the first built specifically for education savings accounts.
• Runs programmes for eight states as of July 2026, including Iowa, Georgia and Nebraska, and was selected to administer Texas’s TEFA programme under a two-year contract worth $26M.
• Raised a $10M Series A in May 2024 led by Tusk Venture Partners, whose CEO Bradley Tusk joined the board.
• Before Odyssey, raised $8.1M to build a network of about 50 pandemic-era microschools across the Northeast.
• Earlier an associate at Drinker Biddle & Reath, where he wrote an amicus brief in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and before law school a teacher in charter schools serving low-income students.

Professional Journey

Connor began as a teacher. TechCrunch reports that he taught in charter schools serving low-income students in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Jose. He then went to Notre Dame Law School because of an interest in education law and policy. While a student there he consulted for the university’s Alliance for Catholic Education, worked as a research assistant to education-law scholar Nicole Stelle Garnett and, according to TechCrunch, consulted on education choice policy in Indiana, Louisiana and Florida. He graduated with a J.D. in 2016.

He joined the Philadelphia firm Drinker Biddle & Reath as an associate, advising startups, school networks and nonprofits. There he helped write an amicus brief in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. In that 2020 case the Supreme Court held that a state could not bar religious schools from a school choice programme because of their religious status, and Connor has said the ruling “paved the way for the policies we help run today.”

When the pandemic closed schools, Connor moved into running schools himself. Notre Dame reports that he raised $8.1 million for a network of about 50 one-room microschools across the Northeast, each with five to 15 students, recruiting teachers and handling their supplies, benefits and back-office work. The experience showed him the bottleneck that became Odyssey’s business. Even where states had education savings account programmes, families waited weeks or months to learn whether they qualified and then to receive the money.

He founded Odyssey in 2021 to fix that part of the system. It verifies identity and eligibility in real time and tells a family its award amount in under a second. It then runs a closed marketplace in which approved spending on tuition, tutoring, therapies or materials can be tracked and audited. Its first large programmes were Iowa’s Students First ESA and Idaho’s Empowering Parents grants, which by July 2023 had distributed more than $110 million to the families of over 67,000 students. Missouri followed. Odyssey was a Yass Prize finalist in 2023, receiving $500,000, and in May 2024 raised a $10 million Series A led by Tusk Venture Partners, with Andreessen Horowitz’s Katherine Boyle and Bling Capital’s Ben Ling investing again.

Growth has brought scrutiny. The Dallas Morning News has summarised audits of the Idaho programme that found improper purchases, a repayment of roughly $478,700 and the state’s decision in 2024 to move to a cheaper provider, as well as concerns from Iowa’s state auditor about added transaction fees. Odyssey rejected the Idaho reporting as “a complete misrepresentation of the facts”. Despite that record, Texas’s comptroller chose Odyssey to administer the Texas Education Freedom Accounts, a $1 billion programme serving nearly 110,000 students in its first year. The two-year contract is worth $26 million and could reach $52 million if renewed. The company also runs Wyoming’s ESA portal and backs its technology with more than 50 U.S.-based customer support agents.

Education

Notre Dame Law School

J.D., 2016