The People Who Built Laprea Now Own It

When Anna DiGilio started Laprea Education in 2019, she was a second-grade teacher with one mission: children first. Every book, every lesson, every decision would start with the child. Seven years later, she has made a decision about who gets to carry that mission forward.

On July 1, 2026, Anna sold 30% of Laprea, not to a private equity firm, but to the people who built it. Through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, or ESOP, 25 of our team members are now part owners of the company, at no cost to them. Anna is still our CEO and still owns most of the company, but the people who write our books, pack our boxes, and support our schools now have a real stake in what comes next.

Why Anna chose her team over an outside buyer

When a founder decides to sell part of a company, the usual move is to find an outside buyer. Anna had that option. She chose a different path.

“After a cancer diagnosis made me think hard about what happens to this company without me, I realized I wanted the people who built it to own its future,” Anna said. “I could have sold to an outside buyer, and maybe that would have made more sense on paper. But this company was built by teachers, curriculum writers, warehouse staff, and customer support team who pour their hearts into it every day. They deserve to share in what they've built. And when the owners are the people doing the work, kids stay at the center of every decision.”

That last part matters most to us. As Anna puts it, owners protect what they have built: “Nobody who owns this company is going to vote to cut corners on a book a six-year-old is using to learn to read.”

What it means for our team

An ESOP is a retirement plan that holds company stock on behalf of employees. Our team members don't buy the shares. They earn ownership through the plan and benefit as the company grows.

For a company of about 50 people, that's a big deal. Many of the people who now own a piece of Laprea have been here since the early days.

"It was really exciting to learn about the ESOP. I’ve known Anna for years, so when she sat us down and explained that she wanted to share ownership of the company with us, I saw it as a meaningful way of giving back. It’s important to her that everyone knows how much their talent, ideas, and hard work have contributed to building the company."

From a second grade classroom to 800 districts

Anna taught second grade for 23 years before founding Laprea. After studying how the brain learns to read, she set out to build books grounded in that science. That work became Developing Decoders, our decodable book line, which now includes more than 1,200 fiction and nonfiction titles written to align with widely used phonics sequences like UFLI Foundations.

Today, Laprea Education serves more than 800 school districts in all 50 states, and we've donated more than 256,000 books to children in the United States, Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

Along the way, Laprea was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies in 2025 and again in 2026. This year, Anna was also named to the Inc. Female Founders 500 list.

The next chapter

Across the country, schools are moving to structured literacy and evidence-based reading instruction as they respond to declining reading scores. For Laprea, employee ownership means the work of supporting that shift stays in the hands of the people who have been doing it all along.

The curriculum writers, warehouse team, account managers, and support staff who built this company now share in its future. And Anna gets to keep doing what she set out to do in 2019, alongside the people she trusts most.

People often ask Anna how a company can be children first and still grow. Her answer is simple: you build it with people who own it.

We're grateful to every teacher, school, and family who has been part of this story. Here's to the next chapter.