Twenty years of writing and assessment product leadership — now in independent practice.
Lorna Maguire founded Backward Design after two decades as VP, Product Management at Vantage Learning, where she led the design and release of award-winning writing and assessment products — including MY Access!, WriteAhead, and Adaptera — used by thousands of K-12, higher-education, and corporate organizations.
She originated GrowThink — the vision, the domain, the business plan, and the pedagogical stance — and serves as Lead Product Manager (contractor) for GrowThink at Vantage. Across every engagement, the through line is the same: AI products that strengthen human thinking rather than substitute for it. That stance comes from the classroom — Lorna began her career as an educator, and the question that has shaped every product since has been the same: does this actually help a student think?
Her practice centers on multi-agent systems with hard pedagogical guardrails, curriculum-aware coaching, and verification surfaces that let teachers and parents trust what the AI is actually doing with a student. She works using a virtual-factory methodology that pairs AI augmentation with structured human review at every stage — PRFAQ to architecture to build to QA — moving products from concept to production faster than traditional teams without cutting rigor.
A consummate team player, Lorna is adept at managing cross-functional relationships across engineering, research, creative services, marketing, and sales. Through Backward Design, she now takes selective new engagements with education companies, publishers, learning-focused startups, and adjacent industries that need AI products built well.