About DownHill Publishing

DownHill Publishing was founded in 1998 in Los Angeles, California. It was created to provide teachers, administrators, parents and students with innovative, high-quality, and timesaving classroom resources.

About the founder

The executive software designer, Ramón Abajo, worked as a classroom teacher for almost 20 years. Ramón has worked in bilingual and English-only classrooms at the elementary and secondary levels. He has received many awards, including “Teacher of the Year” in 1990 (Desert Sands Unified School District, CA). He worked as a high school technology coordinator, and played a key role in the “New Media Academy” in conjunction with the Los Angeles Workforce. He is an artist and free spirit, who finds pleasure and satisfaction in fulfilling educational needs. He is a frequent speaker at educational conferences such as CABE (California Bilingual Education), and more recently at Techno-Caribe, Puerto Rico. Ramón brings a fresh approach to today’s educational challenges.

As a result of his nearly 20 year teaching career (In Spain, The United Kingdom, and Los Angeles County, California), Ramón experienced a need for uniform, easy-to-use computer software, which was both effective and affordable for teachers. He assembled a team of colleagues who joined the effort to make his vision a reality, and thus DownHill Publishing was founded.

Partner, Global Sales Director, Todd Blackmore has been directly involved in the educational software and technology market for the past 20 years. Including his time at Pearson Digital Learning, Educators Publishing Service, and Zuk & Associates. Our goal has always been to develop and deliver tools for educators that help them in the teaching and learning environment.

Growing up in rural Alaska and going to school with native American students of the Yupik and Athabaskan tribes, I learned early on that every student and teacher has different paths to the classroom. Our goal is to provide both students and teachers with the tools they need to succeed on a daily basis. We have a simple approach that we believe is powerful and effective. Develop products for students and educators based upon efficacy and research, deliver them in a timely manner and continue to refine them based on feedback from our customers.

As a competitive athlete and motivation speaker to students and educators, I have realized that what we do and say, affects students every day inside and outside the classroom. My goal is to positively impact the lives of students and the learning process on a daily basis. I am proud to be part of this company and the creative drive it brings to educational software solutions!

News Flash

We are very happy to announce that DownHill Publishing has licensed its acclaimed Fonts4Teachers program to ICON Group International to develop e-books in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The project was created by Professor Philip M. Parker, INSEAD Chair Professor of Management Science, who is the inventor of the “smart-writing machine”, an amazing device that has allowed ICON Group to publish more than 200,000. His “K to 12 +2” project aims to create educational texts (e-book and print) in all the world’s languages, especially for the smaller languages ignored by traditional publishers. Mr. Parker is presently involved in a number of multilingual rural education projects around the world funded, in part, by the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”

Membership and Professional Organizations

DownHill Publishing is a member of a large number of Professional Associations and publications such as: The Book Business, The Art Book, The Fine Books and Collections, The New York Public Library, The Piermont Morgan Library, The NY Center of the Book Arts, The NY Society of Calligraphers, The Society of Guilders, The Jewish Museum, and AFEDA (Association of Book-Binders), IAMPETH (International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting)