Built by people who ran the institutions we now serve
We are not a software company that discovered the social sector. We are three people who spent our careers inside school systems, universities, philanthropy, and the businesses we built ourselves, learned AI the hard way by running our own firm on it, and now teach organizations how to do the same.
The name joins the Latin schola, a place of learning, with the Greek sophia, wisdom. That pairing is the whole idea. When information is free and routine work is automated, the scarce professional skill is judgment: knowing what's worth doing and why. We think that skill can be taught, and that the people who train and manage everyone else should learn it first.
Schola Sophia LLC was founded in 2023 by Edwine Michel and Joseph Terry as a think tank and media practice at the intersection of philosophy, technology, and human flourishing. In 2026 we added structured training, organizational diagnostics, and a national summit, because the institutions we come from needed AI readiness they could trust, measure, and afford, and almost nobody was offering it. The ideas didn't change. The delivery did.
What we believe
The AI skills gap is real, and it has been misdiagnosed. The real gaps are judgment, workflow design, and durable human capability, not tool fluency. Training sticks when it changes how the work is actually done; otherwise it's a nice afternoon. The people who train and manage everyone else are the highest-leverage workforce in any institution. And the organizations most exposed to AI disruption are the least served by the current training market. Closing that gap is the mission and the business.
Why "Schola Sophia"
We exist to bring back practical wisdom as a working skill: the ability to decide well, under pressure, with tools that can do almost anything. Timeless philosophy, modern coaching, and AI, in service of deeper lives, stronger leaders, and more humane organizations.
Our mission is to help people and institutions stay capable, clear, and in charge of their own work amid AI-driven disruption, by pairing the old disciplines of judgment and purpose with the modern discipline of process and performance.
The founders
Edwine Michel, M.S., M.B.A. Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Strategy & Operations (Denver)
Edwine has spent twenty years making organizations run better, from defense engineering and financial services to senior operating roles in education philanthropy and service in public school governance. He built Lean Six Sigma programs inside two large school districts and certified their staff, then rebuilt his own firm around AI to learn firsthand what actually changes. MBA, Boston University; M.Ed., Yale; B.A., B.S., and M.S., University of Rochester; Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. He leads strategy, program design, and the operating system behind every engagement.
Joseph Terry, Ph.D. Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Research & Insights (New York)
Joseph is a philosopher and professor who spent years teaching people to think clearly, well before AI made that the most valuable skill in the room. He holds a doctorate in philosophical theology from the University of Nottingham, is a certified philosophical counselor, started out in astrophysics, and teaches at CUNY, the largest urban university in the country. He leads research and insights: the judgment curriculum, the essays and the podcast, and the frameworks that make our programs something other than a tools workshop.
Idly Etienne, M.B.A. President and Managing Director (Atlanta)
Idly has led people in the two places where culture is hardest to change: a public high school and a sales floor. As a Dean of Students and later Director of Student Accountability, Mentorship, and Culture in Atlanta public education, he built the accountability and mentorship systems a school runs on. Before that he founded a residential real estate brokerage and grew it to more than thirty agents. MBA, Emory University, Goizueta Business School; B.B.A., Alcorn State University. He leads growth, institutional partnerships, and program delivery.
Three cities, on purpose
Denver anchors the Mountain West and the firm's operations. Atlanta anchors the Southeast, home to some of the largest and fastest-changing public institutions in the country. New York anchors the Northeast and our academic and media work. Between the three, a principal is within reach of most of the country's largest health systems, districts, universities, and nonprofits.
Small by design
Three principals in three cities, leveraged by the same AI systems we teach, doing the work of a firm many times our size. That's not a cost-cutting story. It's the product. Clients watch a small firm run on the exact discipline it's selling them, and then they go build their own.
