User:Imaween/Pat McDonagh

Pat McDonagh Mr. McDonagh is arguably the most successful e-learning entrepreneur of all time. A former primary school teacher in his native Ireland, he is the founder of Skillsoft (founded 1983; nee CBT), and Riverdeep (founded 1995; nee HMH). With both of these companies, Mr. McDonagh presaged and led the explosion in e-learning, for both the corporate training and digital K-12 education environments. CBT was the first Irish company to receive an Initial Public Offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange, and subsequently, Riverdeep also debuted with an IPO in the same marketplace. Under his tutelage, the companies achieved combined annual revenues of close to $3 billion dollars.

Mr. McDonagh is the largest shareholder in DigiSoft Ltd, a Cork-based technology company whose solution enables the deployment of video and interactive services on the Television. DigiSoft is the lead technology group of the TVtextbook technologies.

Approximately a decade ago, he recognized that even with the explosion in personal computers and broadband, various groups of society continued to be disenfranchised by the advances in technology. Since that time, he has been developing and investing in hardware and software to deliver high-quality educational content over the device everyone has in their home and at their daily disposal – the television.