Catherine Shaw

Cathy joined Tyton Partners in 2020 as a Director in the strategy consulting practice. Cathy has education operating experience, transactional experience, teaching experience, and a strategy consulting background.

Just prior to joining Tyton, Cathy served as an adjunct in the Andrew Young School of Public Policy at Georgia State University. After working in education technology for a decade, this was her first foray on the “user side” of education technologies that she had been building. Never one to dip her toe in first, she managed a section of over 100 students online as a first-time instructor. Cathy gained a healthy amount of empathy for students, fellow faculty, and administrators as together they navigated the promises and perils of online-only, asynchronous education.

As an operator, Cathy worked with executives at Interfolio and EAB on growth strategy – both organic and inorganic. Most recently, she served as Managing Director of Strategy and Corporate Development at Interfolio, where she was responsible for driving the company’s growth and acquisition strategy, which included the acquisition of ResearchFish – a deal which grew their platform into the research funding and impact tracking space.

Prior to Interfolio, Cathy spent six years building the New Product Development team at the Education Advisory Board: a best practice research, technology, and managed service provider. Her work at EAB focused on emerging areas of growth in Higher Education: online enablement, enrollment management, workforce alignment (adult learners), and leveraging technology to improve student success. She researched the potential impact technology investments would have on the student experience in the above areas and enjoyed building relationships with university and college partners interested in these same issues. Based on this research, she designed, built, and served as General Manager of two technologies which EAB organically launched. As General Manager of these new products until they scaled, she experienced first-hand some of the challenges that institutions face when they want to deliver the best to their students in an ever-evolving learning environment. Notably, she also led market diligence on the acquisition of Royall & Company in 2014.

For the early part of her career, Cathy was on the road as a management consultant focused on growth strategy in consumer products, technology, telecommunications, and media industries. Her specialization in projects with mission-oriented objectives led her to work with non-profits to develop their digital strategies. This work was always done with an emphasis on what more data and advances in technology did to access and equity for the audiences that these entities served.

She holds a master’s degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree from MIT, both in the field of Economics. While at MIT, she was awarded a Teaching Fellowship for her work on improving the freshman curriculum.