Reading is the foundation for wearing many Success Hats in life. 

#CaptionsON Founding Team

Leib Lurie, ​Co-Founder
CEO

Barbara Lurie, ​Co-Founder
Chief Literacy Officer 

Gloria Maxx, Co-Founder
​Chief Marketing + Impact Officer
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Leib + Barbara LURIE

​​Leib and Barbara Lurie
Literacy Advocates, Life-long Learners, Philanthropists
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Co-Founders: Kids Read Now + #CaptionsON​

Barbara Lurie has dedicated her career to teaching, literacy, and music, holding three degrees, all with the talent of intertwining literacy and art. Barb curates the Reading List for Kids REAd Now which is the foundation for the organization's success. She is very active in her community, sits on the Board of the Lincoln Community Centre, is very involved in community theatre, creates and gifts stunning stained glass pieces, is a world-traveler, an award-winning gardener, and above all, a cool Grandma. 

​​Leib Lurie is a tech innovator, serial entrepreneur, literacy advocate, and community activist in his "spare time." From Boy Scouts to the Optimists Club, Pelee Island Co-op Committee (to name a few),  Leib has always given back. He is also a world traveler and a lifelong learner. Of all his roles these days, he enjoys being Chief Grandad the most!  Leib says he is "retired" - but see for yourself! 

Leib and Barb Lurie - glimpses of their  'retirement' journey! 

Kids Read Now  - Barb and Leib's passionate literary legacy 
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When Barb retired as a Reading Specialist and Teacher and Leib sold his last company (he has started a few since!), they first travelled more of the world but soon devoted their time, passion, and funds to their mutual lifelong love of literacy. They co-founded and launched Kids Read Now - a non-profit organization that provides a turnkey K-5 summer reading program for schools. Since 2012, Kids Read Now has already gifted kids with  3 Million books. The Kids Read Now journey has given them extraordinary opportunities to advocate for literacy and meet many people equally as passionate about boosting reading skills and scores in America. 
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Gloria MAXX

​GLORIA MAXX
Captions ON: Co-Founder, Impact + Marketing Officer 
​Creator: Caption.Cool Family + Cartoon Concept

"Books were my best friends as a child." - Gloria                               

As the child of a Romanian Refugee, I  came to Canada at the age of 5 and began Grade 1 after three months of school in Romania. I could read and write Romanian, a phonetic language, but when I tried reading English, I was overwhelmed, laughed at, and bullied for being different. So at recess, I sat in a corner and read my books, who were my friends because I had none.   My father, who had always been a voracious reader, did not speak/read/write English well, so he knew that pain and bought me books every week from the Salvation Army, which is how my love of reading began. Books would become my life-long escape and door to dream and make it possible to pursue goals, especially to overcome periods of  mental  health challenges as a child and teen-ager. So, 45+ years later when  Leib asked Gloria to join the team and create a 'cool kids club' for the "captions project". She pitched  "Caption.Cool" with the tag line being Be.Caption.Cool - Click! Captions ON, initially geared for ages 4-8, but we now include all struggling readers with  #CaptionsON.
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Gloria (right) and her baby sister Jeni in front of their Dad's library which is the only thing he had shipped from Romania. 

Be. CAPTION.cool

 The Caption.Cool Literacy Family ​is moving to Canada! 

Capty, the Caption.Cool Reading Unicorn and his adopted brother Manu, their parents Lizzie and Gunther, along with their school friends Ayana, Shirin, and Alice, and her older brother Loyle with their teacher Luna all have super super-secret  Caption.Cool reading powers they want to share with kids all over the world. They live in Canada, where they are involved in a K-5 literacy campaign and travel the world helping kids solve problems by improving their reading skills by being Caption.Cool 

Be. Caption.Cool - narrated by 'Capty the Reading Unicorn'

​Visit them in Canada: www.CaptionCool.ca 

Our TEAM

 A Global Team: USA,  UK, Canada, Tunisia,  Bangladesh

The vision, concept, foundational messaging, leadership and funding for the #CaptionsON  Literacy Campaign originates in Troy, Ohio, U.S. with Leib and Barb Lurie.  Branding, all creative execution and the 444 Author Ask video campaign was developed by Gloria in Toronto, Canada with our awesome Upwork team.  The initial Caption.Cool family of characters and videos were created by UK Upwork partners.

 El Lee
​Director of Development
​Kids Read Now 

El is the newest team member of Kids Read Now (KRN) and he has jumped in with his heart to  incorporate our  Click! CaptionsON Literacy Campaign into  development mandates alongside the new  Literacy Task Force he implemented  and leads. 

Shuvo Chakraborty,
​Lead Web Developer - Upwork 

Shuvo Chakraborty, our Lead Web Developer from Bangladesh, who teaches Economics at a college full time by day. Shuvo custom coded every page and our  Reading Calculator and helped brand each and every Success Hat! 

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Annette Calicoat
​Community Engagement Liaison
​

Annette Calicoat was instrumental in compiling and curating our Research Section and will continue her role now as Community Engagement Liaison. Annette is based in the Dayton, Ohio Region. ​ 

Imed Samti
Lead Video Developer - Upwork 

Imed Samti, from Tunisia is our Lead Video Editor who animated all our #CaptionsON Explainer videos. ​Imed is an Automation Engineer by day, and his  three year old daughter Sarah, is already enjoying all screen time with #CaptionsON.

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Gloria Delgado
Spanish Translator/Liaison
​

Gloria Delgado  is a retired teacher and from Mexico currently residing in Texas. She will be heading our Spanish translation efforts for Spanish audiences. 
​

Elizabeth Carraro 
 Video Developer/Videographer - Upwork 

Elizabeth Carraro, a very talented third year Ryerson University Student in Toronto who filmed, wrote and developed  all our VIDEO TUTORIALS. ​We are proud to say that the Click! #CaptionsON Literacy Campaign is Elizabeth's first "corporate" gig.

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Creative PARTNERS

​ShelterCHEF empathy ventures

 ShelterCHEF is an empathy-based cause-centric social enterprise that empowers women stigmatized in business by their mental health journeys to use their multi-faceted creative talents to "serve up goodness" - by example. #CaptionsON is their first client. 
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VideoBooth Inc.

The cornerstone of our  444 Author ASK social media campaign is our video and selfie booth which was created by Dale Iannuzzi of VideoBooth Inc. in Canada alongside his technical partners VideoBooth Systems Ltd. (www.videoboothsystems.com) in the UK.

The VideoBooth team reconfigured the entire #Captions ON Video backend to suit our multiple category needs and then made it possible for us to include the custom 10 video backgrounds we created in-house for each category. For the Success Hat Selfie Booth they built an infrastructure for over 50 stickers which we customized to create different experiences in the selfies and videos. Dale's commitment to literacy and our cause is amazing, but don't take our word for it - watch his video! ​​

​Dale Iannuzzi, Founder, CEO VideoBooth, Inc.

Building PILLARS

  Companies and brands we built CaptionsON with: 

We created ​#CaptionsON from scratch, and every word, image, video, web page and meeting we built with the help of the brands and products we believed in to help us succeed. These amazing  global companies provided the working pillars for SUCCESS. 

Each of these companies help the world communicate, and reading is the cornerstone of all communication, so it is fitting to tell the story of how their products helped us launch the #CaptionsON  movement. Stay tuned, the story is evolving - maybe even into a documentary.

The working pillars of  CaptionsON  - with gratitude.