About

Thanks for visiting my site. I hope you will take a few minutes to look around while you are here, and please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions you feel I could answer or if you are interested in having me speak to your organization. On this page you can find our more:

About Jeff Cobb
About the Hedgehog & Fox blog

About Jeff Cobb

I’ve been involved in education and technology for the better part of two decades and have spent much of that time as an entrepreneur working on the leading edge of Web technology and online learning. I now apply the experience I have gained to help organizations:

• Integrate Internet marketing, social media, online learning and customer education approaches into business strategy.
• Take advantage of new educational and business models.
• Develop and implement clear, measurable sales, marketing, and stakeholder engagement strategies.
• Maximize adoption, revenue, and return on investment from Web-based product-and-service offerings.

I currently serve as managing director of Tagoras, a research and consulting firm. Before that, I co-founded and served as CEO of Isoph, a provider of online learning technologies and content for major national associations and charitable organizations. We bootstrapped Isoph from the ground up and established it as the leading brand in its niche. Clients included the Society for Human Resource Management, the American Red Cross, the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the National Wildlife Federation, and many other well-known organizations. Isoph was bought by LearnSomething in 2005. I’ve continued my work with associations under the LearnSomething banner and have also helped lead implementation of the combined company’s consumer education strategy.

Before launching Isoph, I was senior vice president of business development for Quisic, a leading provider of high-quality online management education. At Quisic, I oversaw all of the business development activities for the company, as well as relationships with major Quisic partners, including the National Center on Education and the Economy, PBS, IBM, Pearson, the London Business School, Insead, the Tuck School at Dartmouth, the Marshall School of Business (University of Southern California), and the Kenan-Flagler Business School (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).

Earlier on, I taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill while working on a doctoral degree and managed to win an undergraduate teaching award in the process.

Before (and partly during) graduate school, I co-founded and has served as executive director and chairman of BoysCamp, a nonprofit corporation serving at-risk youths.

I also worked as a research analyst in the corporate governance division of the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a prominent think tank.

I earned my bachelor’s degree at the University of Virginia and a master’s degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I currently serve on the Professional Development Council Section of the American Society of Association Executives as well as on the advisory board for Philantech, provider of the PhilanTrack™ online grant proposal, reporting, and management system. I’ve previously served on the research committee of the eLearning Guild and the editorial board of Innovate, a leading resource for information about technology and education.

About Hedgehog & Fox

The Hedgehog & Fox blog is where I write on a regular basis about about general business and marketing strategy as well as about developments in social media, internet marketing, and online learning 2.0.

Some readers here will no doubt recognize that my name for the blog derives from Isaiah Berlin’s famous analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s view of history, “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Berlin himself took the title from the Greek poet Archilochus, who is credited with saying that “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” Tolstoy as a writer and thinker was somewhat elusive. He exhibited strong characteristics of both the hedgehog and the fox–and he was also one of the greatest writers that ever lived. My view is that great organizations, similarly, exhibit both traits.

I’ll write more on this topic at some point, but for purposes of getting an “About” page up and functioning, I leave it at that for now. I’ll also mention that I blog over at Mission to Learn. I invite you to drop by there at some point as well.

Jeff Thomas Cobb