Laura Anne Bilodeau Overdeck is an American math education entrepreneur and philanthropist. Overdeck is the founder and president of the Bedtime Math Foundation, a nonprofit that seeks to bring recreational math to children through their parents.
Early life and education
Overdeck is the daughter of Emily and Gilbert R. Bilodeau of
Westfield, New Jersey
Westfield is a town in Union County, New Jersey, United States, located southwest of Manhattan. As of the 2010 United States census, the town's population was 30,316,
She attended
Westfield High School Westfield High School may refer to:
* The Westfield School, Perry, Georgia
* Westfield High School (Westfield, Indiana)
* Westfield High School (Massachusetts), Westfield, Massachusetts
* Westfield Technical Academy, Westfield, Massachusetts
* West ...
, where she was valedictorian of her class. She was also selected for and participated in the New Jersey Governor's School in the Sciences.
Overdeck went on to earn a bachelor's degree in astrophysical sciences from
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
.
She also holds a master's degree in business administration from the
Wharton School
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...
After completing her education, Overdeck held positions at D.E. Shaw & Co. and at Stanford Research Institute.
Overdeck founded the nonprofit Bedtime Math in 2012, sending out playful nightly math posts for children to solve with their parents. The blog received early critical acclaim, and the following year she published ''Bedtime Math: A Fun Excuse to Stay Up Late'', her first of four books with Feiwel & Friends, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group.
In 2021, she received Mathical Honors for ''Bedtime Math: This Time It’s Personal''. Subsequently, the Bedtime Math team created an app version of the offering;
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
researchers found that app usage increased children's math skills by an extra three months in one school year, publishing the results in ''Science''.
Overdeck has published opinion pieces on children's math education in
TIME Magazine
''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...
,
Huffington Post
''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
,
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgini ...
, the
Houston Chronicle
The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...
, and
Quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
.
Overdeck serves as a trustee at Princeton University and is vice chair of the board of trustees at the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey.
She also serves on the advisory boards of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
In 2011, Overdeck and her husband established the Overdeck Family Foundation, an organization that funds educational research and
STEM education
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mush ...
.
The foundation's overall goal is to enable all American children to unlock their potential by strengthening learning in and out of school.
The Overdecks’ education philanthropy focuses on four key issue areas: “early impact,” “exceptional educators,” “innovative schools,” and “inspired minds.”
They have made gifts to
Robin Hood Foundation
The Robin Hood Foundation is a charitable organization which attempts to alleviate problems caused by poverty in New York City. The organization also administers a relief fund for disasters in the New York City area. In 2010, a key supporter gave ...
for work by
MDRC MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization based in New York City; Washington, DC; and Oakland and Los Angeles, California.
History
In 1974, the Ford Foundation and six government agencies together create ...
to study the long-term effects of various early childhood programs. The Overdecks have also supported the
Harlem Children's Zone
The Harlem Children's Zone (HCZ) is a nonprofit organization for poverty-stricken children and families living in Harlem, providing free support in the form of parenting workshops, a preschool program, three charter schools, and child-oriented ...
with its early impact strategy and the
Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization created in 2008 by Sal Khan. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also in ...
.
Other grantees have included the NJ STEM Teaching Fellowship, and Governor's School for the Sciences at Drew University in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
.
Overdeck is an alumna of Governor's School and was instrumental in saving the program through private donations in 2006.
In October 2018, The Overdeck Education Innovation Fund gifted $1 million to be distributed over the next three years by the
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
The Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) is a professional public policy school at Princeton University. The school provides an array of comprehensive course ...
for research on education issues. This is the second gift from the Overdeck Family Foundation, the first of which was $1 million donated in 2016.
That same month, the Overdeck Family Foundation pledged $3 million to Opportunity Insights, a policy and research institute based at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
that will publish data on the probability that children will escape poverty based on where they were raised.