Joe Titus: Providing Every Kid With Easy and Affordable Access to Physical Education

Ladderworks is a publishing platform of diverse picture books and an online curriculum with the mission to empower over a million kids to become social entrepreneurs. Our current series features interviews by our interplanetary journalist Spiffy with inspiring Social Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Builders, and Changemakers who are advancing the UN SDGs. 

Spiffy here with the scoop on the entrepreneurial leaders of Planet Earth. As the only interplanetary journalist stationed on this blue planet, I’m thrilled to present this galactic exclusive with Joe Titus, the CEO of Hiveclass. Let’s learn about what’s happening at Hiveclass and how Joe is making a positive impact in the world.

Spiffy: Hi Joe, thanks a million for talking to me today. Tell me, what challenge are you addressing through Hiveclass?

Joe: Thanks for having me, Spiffy! Did you know that kids from lower-income families are far less likely to be active and twice as likely to be obese?

Spiffy: No, I didn’t!

Joe: Well, it’s true, and schools are the first line of defense to combat this income disparity. However, physical education departments across the country are ill-equipped to face the many challenges that make it the number one most-skipped class. Failure to improve access to quality resources for physical education causes a myriad of downstream challenges, affecting graduation rates, school culture, and long-term health.   

Spiffy: What motivates you to do it?

Joe: My co-founder and I started this company almost four years ago at the height of the pandemic when we noticed that PE was not happening on Zoom. As two ‘girl dads’ that grew up playing sports together in the 1980s, we were concerned to see the disheartening statistics around childhood obesity, the disparities among socio-economic and racial lines, and essentially, how kids just don’t play like they used to. After leaving my finance career, I hope to make my kids proud of the company we’ve built. 

Spiffy: That’s very inspiring, Joe! Can you elaborate on the impact of your work?

Joe: We provide innovative tools for teachers, saving them time, and allowing the PE classroom to be ‘flipped.’ For the virtual schools we serve, this allows for greater structure to their curriculum, and for traditional schools, the instruction can be scaled and allow for greater pathways to course completion. Over the past year, we have had 65,000 videos watched or written prompts completed on the platform. Next year, we expect this to multiply by six given the increase in overall users and user engagement.

Spiffy: Wow, awesome! Tell me about a recent organization milestone or initiative. What impact does it make on your community?

Joe: We recently just finished the Techstars Accelerator Program in NYC powered by Samvid Ventures. This was a great way to close the year and celebrate some important milestones for us, including quadrupling the prior year’s sales numbers while keeping 97% of our clients. We also just won the Platinum Award this year from the Modern Library Association which is a nice reminder that our clients are having fun and seeing our value in their day-to-day lives.

Spiffy: Congratulations! Is there anything else you would love to tell our audience?

Joe: Our team is incredible and deserves a shoutout. They are a fun, eclectic bunch made up of video creatives, educators, developers, and growth specialists. We are truly on the go, traveling almost every week of the year to conferences and events, and we have amassed a fantastic community of like-minded education leaders also wanting to see sustainable wellness solutions for today’s youth.

Spiffy: Thanks for speaking with me today, Joe—it’s been an honor!

Prior to being co-founder and CEO of Hiveclass, Joe spent 18 years working in finance—not exactly what he pictured as a kid who had big dreams of being a basketball player. Growing up, he had the opportunity to try out different sports and he had a great time doing it. Joe strongly believes that all kids, globally, should have easy and affordable access to physical education, which is exactly what he’s trying to achieve by showcasing and presenting Hiveclass to schools, educators, parents, brand partners, and beyond. An important benefit of playing youth sports, apart from spending time outdoors and being physically active, is that kids learn teamwork—how to be a part of a team, how to lead, how to win, and how to lose. (Nominated by Gemma Lenowitz. First published on the Ladderworks website on February 28, 2024.)

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect those of Ladderworks LLC.