Susan Preator: unlocking the doors to Learning.

• Author: Guyon, Elisabeth
• Position: Spotlight

Susan Preator believes in the infinite worth of every individual. And as the CEO and co-founder of Imagine Learning, she feels a huge responsibility to prepare students for academic success.

"I've always been passionate about education for everyone," she says. "I remember having a discussion as a senior in high school with my English teacher, saying, 'I think that if you find the key to a person's learning, you can unlock that and everyone could be a successful student.'"

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Imagine Learning was conceived with the idea of teaching English to children around the world. And here in the United States, Preator sees non-English speaking children as "our largest wasted national resource." She explains, "There are five and a half million of them in our schools, and they don't stand a chance if they can't become proficient very quickly. They represent the largest percentage of dropouts in the nation and our state."

While observing her husband's work as director of LDS Philanthropies, Preator developed fresh ideas about educating non-English speakers. She was particularly struck by Brigham Young University Hawaii's model, which has the goal of "returnability," or giving students from Pacific Rim nations a great education and encouraging them to return to their homelands with the tools to make them successful local contributors.

Her involvement in education took a new turn when she began volunteering at the Waterford Institute when her last child entered school there. Preator eventually developed expertise in creating computer-based educational programs through her involvement with the Waterford Institute.

Once she had been working with the Waterford Institute for a few years, Preator was offered the opportunity to work with the founder of the Institute, Dr. Dustin Heuston.

"Dr. Heuston said to me, 'We need to build a reading program for kindergarten kids that will keep them on grade level from day one.' And I said, 'Okay' I had no idea how to do that, but if he thought I could, I knew it must be possible...