PRACTICE Reviews

PMP's CEO does not have the skills nor the qualifications to run the company, which led to many of the challenges and the toxic environment within the company. He lacks experience in the education field, especially when it comes to teaching and best practices. It doesn't help that the CLO (Chief Learning Officer), who's in charge of developing the summer program, only taught for 2.5 years. Little thought and intention is put in to programmatic changes and decisions. As a result, program quality is low and the summer staff experience is overwhelmingly negative. The CEO's company vision and values do not align with educational values of equity, inclusion, program quality, and impact. Data for the program is not accurately tracked and stakeholder survey feedback is often ignored. Rather, the CEO values money and business over the actual impact of the program on scholars and the communities they serve. This is proven by the exorbitant fees PMP charges schools for the program and an emphasis on scaling to reach more schools, rather than improving program quality. In terms of company culture and work place experience - the company (leadership team) puts on a facade of being open to employee feedback, creating a warm and welcoming environment, and valuing its employees. In reality, there is a huge disconnect between the leadership team and all other employees, even though the company has less than 20 employees. The leadership team is disingenuous and lacks sincerity; employees are often lied to and gaslighted by the leadership team. Employees are under-valued and under-paid. The leadership team has fired employees for voicing concerns within the company or disagreeing with the CEO - the leadership team creates "safe-spaces" as opportunities for employees to voice concerns, and then uses what employees say during these meetings against them to fire them. Nepotism and preferential treatment is present within the company; myself and other employees have been told by their managers that in order to move up in the company it is important that they try to be friends with the CEO. Gender pay disparity is another issue at PMP. Two of the highest salaried positions, other than the CEO, are occupied by males, two of which are close friends of the CEO. Finally, the CEO and CLO are culturally insensitive. During my time at PMP, I heard both of them make offensive, sometimes racist, remarks about the communities PMP serves and marginalized groups in general.

The CEO is a young egomaniac who cannot stand to have any type of dissent in the company that is contrary to his opinion. He changed the company from a non-profit to a B corporation (for-profit company) so that he does not have to disclose the financials of the company to anybody within or outside the company. He purposely invited his employees to a "safe space" discussion about the company and fired those who disagreed with him -- and he made sure to fire them after the busy season for the company, which is the summer. He laid off college students that were supposed to work as the Teaching Fellows for the summer with zero notice after a week into the program, leaving many in financial troubles. He sugarcoated it by saying that he would "provide support" in forms of connecting them to other organizations, then "connected" them to positions that they were unqualified for. The CEO says that the company is 7 years old, but it's really only been a real company since last summer, and it should be very telling to all future employees that no one in the programs team has stayed to see two summers yet. The CEO has no experience or formal education in education or business, and has never worked for anyone out of college except for himself. 2 of the highest-paid positions in the company are occupied by the CEO's childhood friends who also do not have experience in their positions. Stay away from this company - it looks all rainbows and sunshines in the beginning, but you'll learn very quickly that it's all talk. Lastly, the quality of the program that they run for the students is disgraceful; I would be very surprised if the company is not shut down by the DOE soon (if the company doesn't go down first for its hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, that is).