About Us – Student Playbook

We are passionate about helping students and alumni find lifelong career success

Our Story

Devin Schain, a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in higher-education start-ups, saw his own children and their friends struggling to find career success in their early professional years. College career centers lacked the resources to get students prepared and those who landed jobs out of college were often underemployed and unfulfilled. When they went to look for a better job, they didn’t have a “go to place” for lifelong career support.

Playbook is dedicated to solving the underemployment crisis facing today’s graduates. By leveraging endorsed marketing, we can drive higher levels of alumni engagement while helping alumni associations offer the career services alumni want and need. At the same time, we are building a scalable pool of placeable talent that recruiters need as young professionals change jobs frequently.

Similar to his previous startup On Campus Marketing (OCM), Devin knew that a university-endorsed model had the potential to expand career services for alumni. At OCM, Devin built relationships with over 1,000 colleges and universities that enabled OCM to directly sell residential life products to parents and students with the school’s trusted brand.

Playbook’s innovative model enables everyone to win – job-seeking alumni, alumni associations, and recruiters.

Our Team

Devin Schain

Founder & CEO

Serial entrepreneur with 8 start-ups
Found and sold On Campus Marketing (OCM), university-endorsed shopping for residential living
Successful higher ed start ups include Campus MD/Access Health Group, Campus Direct, and Educational Direct.
BA, University of Pennsylvania

Chad Massie

EVP, Strategy and Systems

20+ years of technology and business strategy leadership in higher education
VP of Product & Technology and Chief Strategy Officer at the Common Application
Director of Higher Education Partnerships at Hobsons
MS in IT Management, University of Virginia and BA, Duke University

Michelle Zlakowski

Chief Marketing Officer (fractional)

20+ years of marketing, business writing, sales support, and customer success experience
Director at Wolters Kluwer medical education company
Extensive experience marketing endorsed B2B2C relationships
MBA, University of Michigan and BA, Duke University.

Val Matta

Managing Director, CareerShift

Co-founder CareerShift
Grew company to over 300 university and college clients and over 152,000 student and alumni users
Frequent speaker on career management, networking, and job-hunting strategies
MBA, Cleveland State University and BA from Saint Francis University

Doug Lowenstein

Advisor

Fintech senior executive with high-impact corporate strategy experience
Extensive entrepreneurial experience including advising, investing in, building, and Board leadership of start-ups
COO and Advisor at Gradifi, leading education finance employee benefits platform
EVP, Simple Tuition, venture-backed start for college savings
MBA, Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern, BA Brown University

Tom Perkins

Advisor

Finance executive with 30+ years of experience
Led financial functions of lending businesses up to $30B in assets
Extensive experience in financial planning and analysis, business unit finance, and data driven analytics / decision making
Executive finance experience in several financial institutions, including MBNA, HSBC, and Capital One
MBA in Finance and International Business from the Lerner College of Business and Economics at the University of Delaware, BSBA, University of Delaware

Larry Moneta

Higher Ed Consultant

25+ years executive leadership experience in higher education and consulting
Vice President for Student Affairs at Duke University
Associate Vice President for Campus Services University of Pennsylvania
Adjunct faculty appointments at Institute of Public Policy at Duke and Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania
Ed.D. from UMass Amherst, Fulbright Scholar