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Our Leadership

Built by Higher Ed veterans. Our team brings decades of combined experience from inside the university and the enterprise technology sector.

We are committed to helping institutions adapt to the future of Higher Education without losing the human touch. We build transparent, scalable infrastructure that grows with schools and students on their journeys together.

— The Smart Panda Team

Leadership

Wade Coombs

Chief Executive Officer
Drawing on 28+ years architecting solutions for institutions like Stanford and Cornell, Wade brings world-class stability to your infrastructure. As a former developer at the University of Western Ontario, he integrates enterprise rigor into our Suite’s foundation, ensuring Smart Panda Tools is secure and scalable.

Paul Rhinehart

Chief Innovation Officer
Smart Panda Tools - Paul Rhinehart
Paul is an expert in academic operations, having served as a Project Manager at UCLA and Director of Admin Systems at Seattle University. He has optimized systems for Harvard and Princeton, and now applies that administrative insight to Smart Panda Tools, ensuring our Suite solves the complex, operational problems of enrollment.

Lucas Costa

Chief Technology Officer

Lucas brings the agility of a global enterprise architect to your campus. Having led development teams at Oracle and higher-education systems for over 17 years, he infuses consumer-grade speed into our Suite, breaking legacy complexity into adaptable services.

Debra Garretson

SVP of Global Accounts
As a founding member of Panopto EMEA, Debra pioneered EdTech adoption for millions. She brings that same world-class strategy to Smart Panda Tools, building institutional partnerships and ensuring every deployment leads directly to adoption and ROI.

Innovation Fueled by Purpose

We are a collective of engineers, data scientists, and policy experts united by a single belief: administrative friction should never obstruct the path to great education and student success. This mission drives us to empower student mobility by automating the flow of academic data through transparent pathways across Higher Ed.

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Don't Trust a Black Box.

Trust Proven Experts.

Replace algorithmic uncertainty with expert-led clarity. Partner with the team that builds the transparent AI that Higher Ed deserves.

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