Workplace education program provider InStride has named a new chief executive. Craig Maloney stepped into the role at the end of June, replacing Vivek Sharma, who was one of the original founders of the downtown-based company.

InStride partners with academic institutions, including Arizona State University and the  University of Wisconsin-Madison, to provide its corporate partners with education tracks for their employees. The goal is to help employers attract new employees, increase their retention rate, upskill their current workforce and expand the pool of applicants for new roles. Corporate partners include Amazon.com Inc., Magna International Inc., Ascension, Medtronic PLC and Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings. 

InStride negotiates discounted tuition rates with its academic partners, connects corporate partners with these tuition deals and then pulls its revenue from a portion of the difference between the original tuition rate and the discounted rate. 

Maloney said that he was attracted to join InStride’s team because of its mission, business model and team morale. He was most recently the executive vice president at Benefitfocus Inc., which creates software for employee-benefit administration. He also held served as chief executive officer at health benefit management company Maetsro Health and as divisional chief executive officer at human resources management company Aon Hewitt.

“(The mission of) getting more people educated, increasing those opportunities to unlock potential and careers and income and all the trimmings was very, very important to me,” Maloney said. “The business model is also unique in that … most business models have both winners and losers … but if we do everything we say we’re going to do in concert with our partners, everybody should win.”

InStride said Sharma left to focus on other ventures, such as his board positions at Kaiser Permanente and JetBlue, and will no longer be involved with the company.