Bill Zanker is an American businessman who is best known for being the founder of the adult education company
The Learning Annex.
Early life and education
Zanker grew up in
Teaneck, New Jersey. As a senior at
Teaneck High School, Zanker was one of the organizers of a course in Jewish history and culture that started at the high school in the 1972-3 school year after he graduated, an initiative described by The New York Times as "the first public school in the state to offer a Jewish history course."[1]
In 1980 Zanker founded The Learning Annex, which he later sold in 1991. He remained a consultant until 1997, when he partnered with California Learning Annex and acquired New York Learning Annex. In December 2001, Zanker became the owner of all Learning Annex Properties after buying out his partners.[3]
The Great American BackRub
In 1993, Zanker founded a chain of stress reduction stores called The Great American BackRub. He sold the company to The Barclay Group in 1997.[4]
In 2013, Zanker announced the launch of FundAnything.com, a digital platform aimed at broadening the
crowdfunding market to include the general public. One of the more notable financial partners is
Donald Trump; who, in 2013, announced that he would personally support new projects on a weekly basis that would also be promoted on Trump's
Twitter account.[7] However, Trump's participation was short-lived, and his last mention of the project was in March 2014.[8]
In July 2013, the platform supported comedian and radio personality
Adam Carolla in his efforts to raise
US$1 million in under 30 days for his film Road Hard.[9]
References
^Rosenblatt, Gary.
"Jewish Past: New Course In Teaneck", The New York Times, April 30, 1972. Accessed January 15, 2018. "Next September Teaneck High School will become the first public high school in the state to offer a Jewish history course. The result of a two‐year struggle by a small group of students, the course was unanimously approved by the Board of Education at a recent meeting.... Bill Zanker, a senior and another organizer of the course, said he had become involved 'when I saw that history books were slighting the Jew and nothing was being done about it.'"
^Shesol, Jeff.
"What Kind of Loyalty Does a President Need?", The New Yorker, May 19, 2017. Accessed January 15, 2018. "Donald Trump is, 'like, this great loyalty freak,' by his own telling. 'I put the people who are loyal to me on a high pedestal and take care of them very well,' he wrote in Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life, a sort of self-help book for budding blowhards that Trump produced with a co-author, Bill Zanker, in 2007."