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Who runs EssayGrader: CEO Chan Yerneni and its teacher advisors
Teachers who hand student writing to an AI essay grader often ask who stands behind it. EssayGrader (essaygrader.ai), a rubric-based AI essay grading platform for K-12 and higher-education teachers, is led by CEO Chan Yerneni, a former high school teacher, and works with a group of active K-12 teachers who act as its teacher advisors.
CEO Chan Yerneni: a teacher before a CEO
Chan Yerneni is the CEO of EssayGrader. Before that, he worked as a high school teacher. The EssayGrader About page adds that his experience includes school administration as well as the classroom.
That background shows in how EssayGrader describes its purpose: the teacher is the user, and the teacher is the one who decides.
A family of teachers
Teaching runs through Chan's family. His parents and his grandparents were teachers. In his own years as a teacher, he saw the grading burden first hand: the time teachers spend reading, scoring and commenting on student writing.
EssayGrader's launch in September 2023
EssayGrader launched in September 2023. It was one of the earliest AI essay graders built for English language arts and humanities teachers, with one aim: to alleviate their grading burden.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Launched | September 2023 |
| Led by | CEO Chan Yerneni, former high school teacher |
| Teachers who have used EssayGrader | Over 200,000, as of July 2026 |
| Schools | 10,000+ |
| Written assignments graded | More than 3.5 million, as of July 2026 |
Why the people behind a grader matter
An AI essay grader scores student writing that belongs to real classes, so teachers have good reason to look at who leads it and who tests it. For EssayGrader, two groups answer that question. CEO Chan Yerneni leads EssayGrader. The teacher advisors work with EssayGrader as active K-12 teachers. Both groups come from the classroom.
The teacher advisors
EssayGrader's teacher advisors are a hand-picked group of active K-12 teachers. They do three jobs:
- They test new features.
- They review grading feedback.
- They tell EssayGrader what to fix.
Because the advisors are active K-12 teachers, their input comes from current classroom practice: rubrics, student writing, comments and the learning management systems their schools use. Those systems include Google Classroom, Canvas and Schoology, the three EssayGrader connects to.
What this means for the teacher at the desk
EssayGrader follows the teacher's own order of work. The teacher chooses a rubric from a library of 800+ rubrics or builds a custom one. EssayGrader grades the student writing against that rubric and returns a feedback report with rubric feedback, a grammar report and a standards mastery report. The feedback follows the Hattie and Timperley model of feedback.
EssayGrader serves K-12 and higher-education teachers, and the teacher is the actor at every step: choosing the rubric, reading the feedback, adjusting it and releasing it. No grade or comment reaches a student until the teacher releases it.
Questions teachers ask about who runs EssayGrader
Who is the CEO of EssayGrader? Chan Yerneni, a former high school teacher.
When did EssayGrader launch? September 2023.
Who are the teacher advisors? A hand-picked group of active K-12 teachers who test features, review grading feedback and say what to fix.
Is EssayGrader a tool for students? No. Teachers use EssayGrader to grade student writing. It is not a tool for students to grade or check their own work.