edpro.ai
Human Intelligence to Support AI Augmented,
Mission Driven Work
25 years working in education & technology
So here we are in . Like many of us, I find myself AI infused and inspired... Still, I feel like there's an imperative to stay grounded in the kind of primary domain experience, empathy, and earned trust that can't be prompt-engineered. So let's get to work.
Services
What I can do for you
Systems Architecture & Design
Scalable, cloud-native architectures. Multi-tenant systems, real-time analytics, and infrastructure that grows with you.
Full-Stack Development
One engineer, AI-augmented, full stack. Production code from database to UI — so your team never has to choose between shipping and the work that needs their human attention.
AI-Enhanced Internal Efficiency
Custom AI tooling that frees your team from tedious, repetitive work — so they can direct the AI on the boring stuff and turn their attention to the work that needs their human intelligence.
AI/LLM Integration & Strategy
Production-ready LLM features, agentic pipelines, and AI strategy grounded in what actually works in education.
MVP Design & Build
From concept to working product. Architecture built to scale — so your founding team can stay focused on mission, not infrastructure.
Section 508 & Accessibility Compliance
Universal design from the ground up. Audits, remediation, and WCAG-conformant architecture rooted in years of accessibility practice.
Fractional CTO / Technical Leadership
Strategic technical leadership without a full-time hire. Keep your team lean, your mission clear, and your people focused on what they do best.
Architecture Reviews & Audits
Independent technical assessment of your codebase, infrastructure, and security posture — including SOC 2 readiness.
Technical Due Diligence
Evaluating ed-tech acquisitions or investments? I assess the technology, the architecture, and the team behind it.
About Chris Spence
Studied it. Taught it. Built it.
Now in my centaur
What's a centaur?In AI, a centaur refers to a human-AI team — someone who combines deep domain expertise with AI tools to achieve results neither could alone. The term has a double origin: it echoes the centaur of Greek mythology, a fusion of man and horse into something that moves through the world differently than either alone, and it was popularized in modern usage through "centaur chess," where human + computer partnerships consistently outperformed both solo grandmasters and standalone engines. era.
Ironically enough, I started my career caring for horses.
In my last year of undergrad, I connected with an author of an adored gardening book, looking to find a new path forward. I worked for him as a period landscape designer in Southborough, Massachusetts — a role that spanned an unusual breadth: caring for the livestock, tending gardens and a greenhouse, installing period hardscapes and softscapes across the Boston suburbs, editing photos for his book, proofing audio for his NPR radio program. I also built the company website, because the opportunity was there and I knew how.
I wasn't looking for a career pivot so much as something more sustainable and more impactful. Teaching found me during that search, and it fit. I spent seven years as a high school science teacher, football coach, and summer enrichment camp instructor in Massachusetts public schools, coding interactive games for my classroom the whole time — and watching them move the needle for kids who needed a different on-ramp.
That instinct led me to Harvard's Graduate School of Education, where I sought out the Technology, Innovation and Education program. For fifteen years I returned each fall as a teaching fellow for T-522: Innovation by Design — first as a student, then as an alumnus — a thread that kept me grounded in the academic side of ed-tech long after I'd moved into industry.
Today I'm an original member and lead architect of Upbeat, an educational analytics platform serving school districts across the country. Building it from the ground up — multi-tenant auth, cloud-native AWS architecture, real-time survey analytics, AI-powered open response processing — gave me a practitioner's fluency in the systems that modern ed-tech actually runs on.
What I do now at edpro.ai — an evolution of Educational Media Solutions, my DBA for the last 15 years — sits at that same intersection, but sharper. I work with small companies and startups that need someone who can think across the full stack — from database schema to product strategy, from LLM integration to the classroom implications of what gets built. For small teams doing mission-driven work, that means one experienced partner who can carry the technical load — freeing your people to focus on the compassionate, human work that no AI can replace. I pair-program with AI agents and design agentic pipelines for autonomous development and quality control. I'm not a generalist who dabbles in AI. I'm an architect who has spent the last several years building production AI features and integrating modern LLM tooling into real educational software used by real kids and teachers.
Years of work in universal design and accessibility have shaped how I build. Section 508 compliance and WCAG conformance aren't afterthoughts I bolt on at the end — they're baked into the architecture from day one. Education technology has to work for everyone, and that commitment runs through everything I ship.
My background in education isn't window dressing. It shapes how I think about what technology should actually do — who it serves, what it gets wrong, and where it genuinely helps. That perspective is increasingly rare in a field moving fast enough to forget it.
& Technology
for an Audience of Millions
Experience
Teaching Fellow
Massachusetts Public Schools
School of Education
2008 – Present
2020 – Present
2010 – 2020
Communications · 2008 – 2010
2001 – 2007
& Construction Apprentice
Clean Reports
Infrastructure
NoSQL · Serverless
Architecture
Server Development
A personal note from Chris...
So yeah, I definitely didn't write the above. Well, I did — once, years ago — but AI polished it, drew on countless hours of working with me, and did a pretty good job touching it up. It actually makes me sound like a bit of a badass there near the end. It also designed this whole website in about 15 minutes. A lot's changing. Here's what I keep coming back to, though: imperfection is what makes us human. It's how we connect — through the rough edges, the workarounds, the judgment calls that don't optimize for anything except doing right by people. Some of AI's relentless pursuit of perfection runs counter to that. I don't think the answer is to resist it. I think the answer is to stay close enough to the work to know when the human imperfection is the point. For 25 years, I've tried to bring that instinct to good people doing hard work in unsettled times. I think that matters more now than ever.
Portfolio
Where you can see my work
Available for review by appointment. Reach out and we'll find something relevant to walk through together.
Request a Walkthrough
A personal note from Chris...
I'm a fairly private person and an aggressively private professional. I don't like to link to or imply credit due for other people's big ideas — the founders, the teams, the teachers who shaped those products deserve that. But I've built a lot of ed-tech products and solutions over the years, and I'm happy to walk through the work in conversation. Let's chat via Zoom, just don't count on ever catching me on webcam. Doesn't happen.
So you clicked it
Help me downsize
That I won't do.
I've had the good fortune to work with some very smart entrepreneurs and thought leaders over the years. If you've been good at what you do, your people are your people for a reason. You've curated them in the same manner they've selected you for an employer. They know your mission, your customers, and the nuances gleaned from experience that no documentation can capture. They're on your wavelength.
The last thing you need is fewer of them.
What you probably do need is for the ones you have to stop drowning in the tedious stuff — the repetitive workflows, the manual processes, the technical overhead that eats their week before they ever get to the work that actually matters.
That's what I do. I get to know your people, learn what slows them down, where they sense opportunity, and how we can connect those dots — so they can do the work you hired them for AND solidify the impact promise you've made to your intended audience.
I'd argue that the question small businesses should be asking is... how do we stay lean and scale impact.
You've already assembled the team. They have the domain knowledge, the relationships, and the instincts. What they don't have is enough hours in the day — because too many of those hours are spent on work a machine could handle.
Fix that, and you don't need fewer people. You need the same people — finally operating at full capacity.
Don't shrink the team. Multiply what they can do. The messy, imperfect, deeply human work — the kind that connects people and earns trust — that's not a bug to optimize away. It's the whole point. Free your people to do more of it.
Get in Touch
Let's build something that matters
In the interest of transparency, I do not work with organizations that present a conflict of interest with my current role — including direct competitors in the teacher retention analytics space.