EA Stack Series Part IV: Giving District Data a Platform with Podium with Katie O'Brien
In the latest episode of the DatabasED podcast, co-hosts Molly Stewart (Senior Project Manager) and Rosh Dhanawade (VP of Product) sit down with Katie O'Brien (Senior Product Manager) at Education Analytics to explore Podium, EA's data visualization platform built for education leaders.
Katie shares how Podium helps districts, schools, and state agencies answer the big questions they face every day, from tracking chronic absenteeism to understanding student behavior and enrollment trends. The conversation dives into how Podium's core dashboard suite provides quick, reliable insights while also giving districts the flexibility to build custom dashboards tailored to their unique initiatives.
The episode also unpacks the technical side of building a scalable business intelligence platform in education. Katie discusses how EA leverages tools like Apache Superset (via Preset), Ed-Fi data standards, and the Stadium data warehouse to deliver secure, multi-tenant data access across districts and states. She also highlights the challenges of adapting traditional BI tools for education use cases, including differences in school calendars, data privacy requirements, and complex user structures.