
About
At Tagoras (pronounced tah-GOR-us), we have more than 15 years of experience serving the global market for adult lifelong learning, continuing education, and professional development. We advise organizations in the learning business on how to maximize their reach, revenue, and impact, and we publish a range of educational content to support those who serve and are served by learning businesses.

Tagoras was launched in 2007 by Jeff Cobb and Celisa Steele, veteran edupreneurs with deep roots in learning, technology, and the market for adult education. Over the years, the company has grown into a team with expertise in all major aspects of the learning business landscape.
Our name, Tagoras (pronounced tah-GOR-us), is a neologism that draws meaning from three sources.
Tag
Tags (< >) add descriptive metadata to online text, images, video, and other resources and are essential to the syntax and structure of the Web. Tags are about making sense of things. We are too, and our sense-making goal is reflected visually in the two connected tags that form the basis of our logo.
Agora
In ancient Greece, the agora was the public marketplace and the center of civic interaction. It was where citizens connected, transacted business, and learned. Todayโs lifelong learning market is just as vital as the agora was.
Protagoras
Plato credits this ancient Greek philosopher with founding the Sophist movement. Unjustly maligned in subsequent centuries (especially by Plato himself), the Sophists were the first professional teachers, seeking truth through dialogue. We want to reclaim the tradition of teaching excellence that Protagoras started.

The Learning Business Landscape
Our work spans what we characterize as the learning business landscape that includes learning business as well as the broader stakeholder groups they serve and rely upon.

Learning businesses are market-facing providers of learning. They create learning experiences and sell them to adult lifelong learners. They have to generate revenue, and most of them have to generate profit. So they are businesses, and they are learning providers, and the blend of those two makes them learning businesses.
Learning businesses include trade and professional associations, academic continuing education units, training firms, and edupreneurs. The reason we coined the term โlearning businessโ is because there wasnโt a succinct term that encompassed all of these organizations, and yet we see commonalities, such as being market-facing and serving adult learners. In addition to be being useful for distinguishing these types of learning providers, the term also provides a sense of community and connection. Learning businesses are different from corporate learning and development and academic degree programs.
Learning businesses exist in a broader landscape made up of lifelong learners, who are trying to figure out what they need to know and how to keep their skills and knowledge up to date, looking at various options, and trying to find ones that match what they need and want.
That landscape also includes individual subject matter experts who have more options than ever to go out on their own to provide information, but they often also work with learning businesses. Many learning businesses rely on subject matter experts to deliver conference sessions, for example.
At Tagoras, our goal is to amplify each aspect of the learning business landscape, increase the impact of the work that learning businesses and experts do, and elevate the role of lifelong learning in society. We do this through our consulting services as well as through the channels through which we provide resources to the learning business landscape.