Branching Minds Names Mitch Benson Chief Executive Officer; Co-Founder Maya Gat Becomes Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Chair

Written by Abigail Woodworth | Oct 8, 2026, 6:15:00 PM

NEW YORK, NY — October 8, 2026 — Branching Minds, a leading K–12 education technology company that helps districts identify, support, and accelerate student success, today announced that Mitch Benson has been named Chief Executive Officer, effective October 1, 2026. Co-Founder Maya Gat, who has led the company since founding it in 2013, becomes Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Chair of the Board of Directors. Co-Founder David Magier remains on the board and continues to partner with Benson on mergers and acquisitions, strategic contracts, and legal strategy.

Branching Minds began with a problem Gat knew firsthand as a classroom teacher: educators had more student data than ever and almost no practical way to turn it into timely, targeted help for the students who needed it most. She and Magier founded the company in New York in 2013 to do the heavy lifting of Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), bringing academic, behavioral, attendance, and social-emotional data into one place and giving teachers actionable, research-backed guidance on what to do next.

What started as a tool for a handful of schools has grown into a platform used by nearly 300,000 educators in more than 500 districts across 38 states, improving outcomes for over 2 million students. Along the way Branching Minds became a Certified B Corporation with a B Impact Score of 137.6, the highest of any education support company globally, and built a culture recognized in 2026 on Fortune’s Best Small Workplaces™ list for the second consecutive year, ranking #8 nationally, with Great Place to Work® Certification™ for 2026–2027. Its product earned two 2026 CODiE Awards, for Best Collaborative Solution for Teachers and Best Productivity and Workflow Tool for Teachers, and 2026 EdTech Awards for Personalized Learning and Visionary Leadership.

"When I was teaching, I watched kids slip through the cracks because the adults around them couldn’t see the full picture. We built Branching Minds to fix that, and it now works for two million students. Doubling that impact will take someone who has done it before, and Mitch has. That frees me to spend my time where I started: making the product better for teachers and driving stronger outcomes for students," said Maya Gat, Co-Founder, Chief Innovation Officer, and Executive Chair, Branching Minds.

Benson joined Branching Minds as President in January 2026 and has since taken on leadership of product, engineering, security, operations, finance, and revenue, while leading the company’s multi-year strategic planning work. He brings more than two decades of experience in education technology, vertical SaaS, and large-scale platform growth. He spent over a decade at Instructure, where he helped grow the company from under $50 million to nearly $700 million in annual recurring revenue, spanning two private equity transactions, two IPOs, and an expansion from a single-product offering to a multi-product education platform. As Chief Product Officer and later Chief Strategy Officer, he led the development of Canvas, the #1 learning management system in education, and more than $1 billion in strategic acquisitions, including Parchment and LearnPlatform.

Prior to Instructure, Benson held senior leadership roles at Pearson and Microsoft, overseeing global education technology teams and large-scale digital transformation initiatives. Earlier in his career, he served in public education and statewide technology leadership in Washington, including managing technology systems supporting schools statewide.

"Two million students is a remarkable start, and it's still a fraction of the kids who need this kind of support. My job is to get Branching Minds into more districts without losing what made educators trust it in the first place. Maya and David built a product teachers actually want to use. I don't intend to change that," said Mitch Benson, Chief Executive Officer, Branching Minds.

As Chief Innovation Officer, Gat will oversee learning engineering focused on readiness, adoption, and student impact; and the integration of new capabilities into the Branching Minds platform. As Executive Chair, she will lead the Board of Directors and partner with Benson on governance and long-term strategy.

“Maya and I are so proud to have built a company that outperforms on culture and on outcomes, and we are more bullish about Branching Minds today than we have ever been. Mitch has built and scaled some of the most widely used platforms in education, and he has done it while keeping educators at the center. We are so excited to support Mitch as he leads our next chapter of growth and impact,” said David Magier, Co-Founder and Board Member, Branching Minds.

About Branching Minds

Branching Minds partners with K–12 schools and districts to help educators streamline differentiated instruction and personalize learning through a comprehensive MTSS solution. By bringing academics, behavior, attendance, social-emotional learning, and safety into one unified system, Branching Minds helps teams act earlier, collaborate more effectively, and drive measurable academic and behavioral outcomes for every student. Since 2013, the company has collaborated with nearly 300,000 educators in more than 500 districts across 38 states, improving outcomes for over 2 million students. Learn more at www.branchingminds.com.

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