Our Team
John Sessler (he/him)
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant
John Sessler founded Wet Cement Education Strategies in 2016 and recently expanded the consultancy with Anil Hurkadli. He designs joyful, playful, relevant, and inclusive learning experiences, drawing on his own education journey and arts background. John specializes in learning and curriculum design, education research, teacher professional learning, family and community engagement program strategy, and bridging the gap between research and practice.
Most recently, John was Director of Professional Learning at PBS KIDS funded by the Department of Education’s Ready To Learn (RTL) initiative. In that role, he led educator engagement initiatives, managed station mini-grants for 45 PBS stations, and developed a statewide resource distribution strategy for PBS stations receiving RTL funding. He also oversaw product development, instructional design, and marketing for PBS KIDS Self-Paced Learning for Educators.
As a consultant, John has led projects with PBS, Alliance for Learning Innovation, NAEYC, the Right Question Institute (with Harvard Graduate School of Education, National Geographic, and the Library of Congress), Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, and the Hallie E. Ford Center at Oregon State University. He is trained as a White Anti-Racist Identity Development Facilitator with Embracing Equity and was a 2020 New America Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) Fellow. He holds an Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.S. in Communication from Northwestern University.
Anil B. Hurkadli (he/him)
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant
Anil B. Hurkadli is dedicated to helping people gain the knowledge, skills, mindsets, and relationships they need to thrive. His commitment to expanding educational and economic opportunities is deeply influenced by his family’s immigration story, and he has pursued this work across the public, private, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors.
As a consultant, Anil supports clients to better understand how leadership, social identities, group dynamics, and organizational structures shape effective strategies. He works with clients to improve their ability to notice what’s happening around them, listen more deeply, and adapt to change in real time.
Anil most recently served in the Biden-Harris Administration as Acting Deputy Director for the Office of Educational Technology and Chief of Staff for the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education. His role included shaping guidance on artificial intelligence in educational settings and advising Secretary Miguel Cardona and other senior agency officials on issues related to AI, digital equity, and digital health, safety, and citizenship.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Anil served as the Senior Vice President of Community Impact with the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation. In that role, he managed philanthropic partnerships with city, county, and state governments to launch innovative policy solutions, including a guaranteed income pilot, a childhood savings account program, alternatives to pretextual stops by law enforcement, and long-term recovery funding for small businesses impacted by the pandemic. He previously worked with the Thrivent Foundation, where he partnered with youth leaders, service providers, elected officials, and the Aspen Institute to launch a collective impact effort in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region that connects systems-involved young people to post-secondary and career opportunities. He also implemented Minnesota’s first alternative teacher licensure program as executive director for Teach For America’s Twin Cities region.
Anil is a graduate of Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught courses on management and leadership at the University of Southern California, University of Minnesota, and the Kennedy School. His writing has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, the Minnesota Star Tribune, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Education Week.
Collaborators
Lavanya Mohan is an education and workforce development consultant with 12+ years of experience in capacity building for middle managers and leaders including designing and scaling communities of practice, peer-learning and train-the-trainer models. She has codesigned hybrid programming for leaders, iterative content development and equitable and inclusive facilitation practices at PBS KIDS and the Aspen Institute. Her work is rooted in equitable, culturally responsive and accessibility frameworks with deep expertise in Universal Design for Learning, Human-Centered Design, Adult Learning Theory, and Liberatory Consciousness frameworks. Lavanya holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.B.A from University of Michigan.