Lexington, MA—January 15, 2026 – College Guidance Network (CGN), the expert-enabled AI college and career guidance platform, today announced that Angie (Mac) McAllister has joined the company’s senior leadership team as Principal AI Strategist. The hire marks a significant milestone for CGN and signals the company’s ambition to build one of the most consequential AI-powered learning and guidance systems in education.
McAllister most recently served as Group Product Manager at Google, where she led product for LearnLM + Gemini for Learning. In that role, she oversaw the development of LearnLM, a new family of AI models fine-tuned specifically for learning and grounded in decades of educational research. Her work focused on making teaching and learning experiences more active, personalized, and engaging, helping set the direction for how generative AI can be responsibly and effectively applied in education at global scale.
“Families are facing an incredibly complex landscape as they navigate college and career choices in this rapidly changing AI economy,” said McAllister. “CGN’s expert-based model extends the reach of counselors, ensuring every family has the trustworthy, personalized guidance they need to make these life-changing decisions with confidence, rather than anxiety.”
Prior to Google, McAllister was Senior Vice President of Research at ACT, where she guided research, thought leadership, and solution development aimed at helping learners achieve education and workplace success. Her work informed national conversations on assessment, readiness, and outcomes across K–12, higher education, and workforce pathways.
Earlier in her career, McAllister served as Senior Vice President of Personalized Learning and Analytics at Pearson, where she led teams responsible for building personalized learning, analytics, accessibility, data privacy, and content metadata capabilities across Pearson’s digital learning product portfolio.
McAllister teaches college courses in computer science and business.
CGN CEO and Founder Jon Carson emphasized the strategic importance of the hire. “Great companies have great teams, and this is especially true in the AI race. Angie just raised the bar for us.”
As Principal AI Strategist, McAllister will help shape CGN’s long-term AI vision, guiding how expert knowledge, learning science, and responsible AI design are embedded across CGN’s product ecosystem as the company scales nationally.
About College Guidance Network
College Guidance Network is an expert-enabled AI guidance system that gives families and counselors access to year-round college and career guidance from over 400 national experts, helping reduce stress, improve planning, and expand access to high-quality guidance at scale.
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