BNED has a long, rich legacy of serving the education industry. It began in 1965, when founder Leonard Riggio opened his first bookstore, the Student Book Exchange, in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Three years later, Mr. Riggio opened the first on-campus, contract-managed bookstore at Queensborough Community College, with additional contract-managed campus stores following soon after. In 1971, Mr. Riggio acquired the flagship Barnes & Noble trade name and within a few years expanded the company’s reach to more than 40 Barnes & Noble College on-campus stores in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Over the next few decades, Barnes & Noble College continued to grow its store footprint. In 2015, Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. became an independent public company and parent of Barnes & Noble College, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol BNED. Becoming a public company allowed BNED to pursue greater growth opportunities in the education sector, including enhancing and expanding its digital capabilities. Since 2015, BNED has grown substantially, acquiring LoudCloud, MBS, Promoversity, Student Brands and Paper Rater, and launching Bartleby, the Company’s first internally developed direct-to-student digital solution – an important step in BNED’s ongoing digital transformation.