Join Our Panel of EdTech Founders From Around the World
Learn International Perspectives on the
Challenges and Opportunities of Educating the Planet
Democratizing Education:
The Future of Global EdTech
Tuesday, October 10
5:00 – 8:30pm
Casa Italiana
on the Campus of Columbia University
Panel and Keynote Discussion
Cocktail Reception to Follow
Register Today
There is no greater social equalizer or pathway to upward mobility than education but for so many children in our global society, a meaningful education is out of reach. Technology has always held the promise to change that but progress is seen only in isolated pockets.
Join the discussion at “Democratizing Education: The Future of Global EdTech” and learn how innovative ideas, motivated entrepreneurs, and progressive policymakers are disrupting antiquated school systems across the globe.
Featured Keynote:
Yin Lu, Vice President of International at Khan Academy
EdTech Founders Panel
Denis Mizne, Director, Fundação Lemann (Moderator)
Kago Kagichiri, CEO & Co-Founder, Eneza Education in Kenya
César Wedemann, CEO, QEdu in Brazil
Pranav Kothari, Co-Founder, Mindspark in India
Miriam Altman, CEO & Co-Founder, Kinvolved in US
Sponsored by Fundação Lemann and the Nasdaq Educational Foundation.
Hosted by the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs,
their Center for Development Economics and Policy,
and Columbia Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Design.
4:30pm Doors Open
5:00 – 6:15pm Panel Discussion
6:15 – 7:15pm Keynote
5:00 – 6:15pm Cocktail Reception
ABOUT KAHN ACADEMY
Khan Academy is a case study for how technology can successfully smash traditional barriers and democratize education. Khan Academy provides a free, world-class education in 40 languages to 40 million students and 2 million teachers a month. To date, Khan Academy has delivered 1 billion lessons, and looks to fulfill its credo that: You can learn anything. For free. For everyone. Forever.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS AND FOUNDERS
Miriam Altman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Kinvolved
A former NYC Department of Education high school history teacher, Miriam is CEO and Co-founder of Kinvolved, a social enterprise that has launched a movement to elevate student attendance by including families in education. Kinvolved’s mobile and web app, KiNVO, enables K-12 school staff to access informative attendance data and to engage families through real-time, translated, text messaging.
Under Miriam’s leadership, Kinvolved has grown to exceed 115,000 users, while revenues have grown 250% in FY 2017 to date. In the 2015-2016 school year, attendance among Kinvolved partner high schools increased 13 times that of their peer schools.
Kinvolved has been featured in press including the New York Times, and has won awards from The Robin Hood Foundation, Teach For America, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and more. Miriam and her co-founder are winners of the Gratitude Award, Forbes 30 Under 30, and the Jo Ivey Boufford Award for Innovative Solutions to Public Service Challenges, by New York University.
Miriam is co-leader of the preK-12 Collective Action Network for South Bronx Rising Together. She is also a mentor for the Social Innovation Initiative and Women’s LaunchPad at Brown University, from which she graduated with a BA with Honors. She also holds an MPA from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and an MA, Ed., from Lehman College.
Kago Kagichiri is Co-founder and CEO of Eneza Education Limited (ranked by Fast Company’s top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Africa). Eneza Education offers educational courses for mobile users across Africa. Through individualized and interactive courses and mobile chat classrooms, Eneza aims to make over 50 million students across Africa smarter. Eneza offers a virtual tutor and teacher’s assistant for students and teachers to access courses and assessments while interacting with live instructors through a mobile phone. The company sells subscription for its courses to individual parents, students, or teachers. Prior to Eneza, Mr. Kagichiri founded MiliQi Networks. Prior to MiliQi he co-founded and served as CTO of M-Prep Inc. Kago was one of Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneurs of 2015.
Pranav Kothari is the Domain Architect of Mindspark and Vice President of the Large Scale Education Programs at Educational Initiatives (EI). He was a member of the development team of the Mindspark product, which is a technology-based, personalized and adaptive learning tool for Mathematics and Language. He led the operations of the Mindspark Centres in urban slums of Delhi and Mindspark’s subsequent deployment in government schools of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. At EI, Pranav has also overseen various large scale student assessments and capacity building workshops in various states and was a member of the Joint Review Mission. Pranav is interested in student assessments, educational technology, and the critical need for a Science of Learning as a pre-requisite to ensure students learn with understanding. Prior to EI, Pranav studied Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and finished an MBA at the Harvard Business School
Yin Lu has been VP of International at Khan Academy for over 2 years. Prior to joining KA, she was Head of Global Initiatives and Head of Marketing Communications at Coursera. Yin also has experience at Google and Microsoft and graduated from UCLA with a BA in Economics, Urban Studies and a Masters in Counseling. Yin works on international market development at Khan. She lives for radical ideas that change the world through technology, goodwill and education at colossal scale. Prior to Khan Academy, Yin spent time at Coursera, Google and Microsoft. She loves high elevation (which means skiing, mountain biking, hiking) and high notes (which means singing).
Denis Mizne, Director, Fundação Lemann
Denis heads Fundação Lemann, a private foundation established by global entrepreneur Jorge Paulo Lemann to increase the quality of public education in Brazil. He is also chairman of the board of Instituto Sou da Paz and serves on other boards in the areas of education, human rights and public safety. Before joining the Foundation, Denis was founder and Executive Director of Instituto Sou da Paz, a leading Brazilian NGOs focused on violence prevention. He has contributed to the approval of the “Disarmament Statute,” one of the most modern pieces of legislation to control the use of guns. After being enacted, the law helped reduce homicides for the first time in decades in the country – thousands of lives have been saved. By developing several crime prevention projects with young people in the most violent places in Sao Paulo, and working to improve the work of the police and criminal justice systems, Sou da Paz has helped more than a million people. Its work has been recognized as one of the reasons why the city of Sao Paulo was able to reduce by 80% its homicide rate in the last decade.
César Wedemann Chief Executive Officer, QEdu
César Wedemann has been leading QEdu – an EdTech startup invested by Lemann Foundation – towards the mission of transforming the public education in Brazil through technology and data analysis. QEdu is currently the country’s largest educational data platform, focused especially on serving governments and educational departments.
César started his entrepreneurial career at the age of 13 and since then he has lived in four countries and three continents. Prior to QEdu, César has also served the management consulting firm Booz&Co. and worked at Easy Taxi, a mobile e-hailing app where he managed the operations of 30+ countries and led the largest startup merger in Latin America (with Tappsi, in Colombia).