Unreasonable FUTURE 2021

colossal. Although we all feel the effects of the unprecedented pace of change, the challenges we experience will not be evenly distributed — people living in underserved communities and those lacking access to upskilling opportunities risk being the hardest hit. This collaboration is about reaching them.

Unreasonable FUTURE, now in its third year, is a unique, multi-year collaboration between

Unreasonable FUTURE is founded on the belief

Accenture, Pearson, Fossil Foundation and

that no single entity can solve this challenge

Unreasonable Group bringing together

alone and it is only by coming together and

disruptive innovators and entrepreneurs to co-

galvanising an ecosystem of investors, policy-

design a future in which people and technology

makers, executives and thought leaders that we

work side-by-side to create a more sustainable

can scale the efforts of Unreasonable FUTURE

and equitable future for all.

entrepreneurs, the world’s most impactful growth-stage entrepreneurs, who are at the

Rapid technological innovation, globalization,

forefront of supporting and disrupting the very

demographic shifts, climate change and

nature of work.

geopolitical transformations are having an unprecedented impact on the labour

This is not simply another corporate-backed

markets around the world, and now with the

accelerator. We are building a movement. We

ILO predicting that half the global workforce

humbly invite you to join us.

could lose their jobs because of Covid-19, the shock to the labour market is even more

unreasonablefuture.com

Content

06 08 10 12 14 16 Why it matters

Applied

Be-novative

Career Masterclass

Classteacher EduBridge Learning Systems

About the partners

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

LIFELONG LEARNING

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

LIFELONG LEARNING

18 20 22 24 26 28 Fire Tech

LabourNet

Learnerbly

Lifeed

MyVillage

Odetta

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

LIFELONG LEARNING

LIFELONG LEARNING

LIFELONG LEARNING

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

30 32 34 36 38 OnlineMedEd

OpenClassrooms

TO THE MARKET

Upswing

Zindi

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

Why it matters

Addressing the global wealth gap is one of the greatest challenges of our time. With the devastating impact of the pandemic amplifying inequalities even further, the need to find ways to ensure the workplace of tomorrow is inclusive and equitable for all, is even more critical. Unreasonable FUTURE brings together a hand-selected portfolio of entrepreneurs leveraging innovative and advanced technologies to ensure future generations are equipped to thrive in the new economy. Unreasonable Group is honored to collaborate with Fossil Foundation, Pearson, and Accenture to help co-design a future that will benefit everyone.

Pearson is the world’s leading learning company and believes that in an ever-changing and increasingly connected world, education and lifelong learning are the keys to success. For many people, learning is the route to a job to support their family or to provide the skills needed to help them make progress in their career. Simply put, for every learner, at every stage of their life, education is the path to opportunity and fulfillment. Pearson, as a Founding Partner of Unreasonable FUTURE, wants to equip millions of learners worldwide with the skills, knowledge, and insights needed to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.

There are more young people alive today than ever before in human history.

Ninety percent of them live in marginalized communities or less developed countries. Many face significant barriers to fulfilling their potential and adapting to the pace of change. How do we ensure that all young people have an opportunity to unleash their power and purpose? Fossil Foundation partners with some of the world’s most innovative changemakers to create better opportunities for youth living in underserved communities.

Let’s design a future that benefits all of us.

Let’s reimagine the very nature of learning and work.

Let’s unleash the power of youth.

At Accenture, we are dedicated to positively impacting our people, our clients, and our communities by creating “new skilling” pathways for an inclusive future of work — a future in which all workers have the motivation, means, and opportunity to thrive in the digital economy. The Dock (Accenture’s Global Centre for Innovation) is tirelessly exploring this topic, whilst seeking to pioneer new ways to fulfill human needs using emerging technologies. Unreasonable FUTURE offers an incredible opportunity to join forces with like-minded organizations and turn our ambitions for an inclusive future into reality.

SECTOR ABOUT

Australia, United Kingdom, United States

REGIONS

Khyati is the CEO of Applied, a behavioural science backed tool for predictive & fair hiring. In her former life, her pursuits ranged from co-founding and leading an AI based company looking at sustainable supply chains to having worked in investment banking with the likes of JP Morgan and RBS. She has a breadth of experience in data science, product development and fundraising. She holds an MSc in Economics (specializing in game theory) from the London School of Economics and an MBA from London School of Business (with an exchange at the Wharton School).

Using AI and skills based hiring to remove bias so teams can hire the best candidates.

Khyati Sundaram

ENTREPRENEUR

Khyati Sundaram

Applied Applied is the essential platform for de-biased hiring. Its research and data driven methodology is built with purpose: surface the best candidates, remove flawed signifiers, and mitigate systemic inequities, taking the guesswork out of company growth. By anonymizing applications, leveraging a skills-based methodology, and building transparency and analytics into every step of the process, Applied’s platform surfaces vital talent that would otherwise be missed. Pushing back against conventional wisdoms and accepted practices with a smarter way, Applied rearchitects hiring processes, applies research over resumes, science over the status quo, insights over gut instincts, and skills over credentials. Organizations that alter the way they hire, not only discover the very best candidates, they help usher in a world where everyone feels a sense of inclusion, equity, and belonging.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

CEO

beapplied.com

8

9

10

SECTOR ABOUT

Hungary, United States

REGIONS

Pris is the founder and CEO of Be-novative, a Design Thinking Process Management Platform and SingularityU Labs company backed by Microsoft and Horvath as strategic partners supporting 100+ Fortune1000 companies digitally on creating a culture of collective creativity. She is recognized by Forbes 30under30, is the winner of several competitions (SingularityU’s first Global Impact Competition in the CEE region, The Next Web’s Innovation Challenge, TechMatch Europe Silicon Valley, Morgan Stanley CTO Summits), wrote several articles about the future of innovation and education and why collective creativity will contribute to breakthrough products and services, and how it strengthens our self-esteem and drives a happier and higher quality of life, implemented +500 Open Innovation projects and taught innovation courses across the globe on six continents, and has supported the OECD to involve thousands of people in designing more inclusive societies. She graduated as a psychologist in 2009 from the University of Budapest and University of Copenhagen, and graduated from Singularity University.

Providing a virtual workshop facilitation platform to promote collective problemsolving and diversity of ideas.

Priszcilla Várnagy

ENTREPRENEUR

Priszcilla Várnagy

Be-novative Be-novative believes that humans can solve any problem together and derive better conclusions together, so long as they are able to design the path and forge the connections to get there. As a result, Be-novative created a Design Thinking Process Management and Collaboration SaaS Platform to support teams in remote creative problem-solving, Design Sprints, agile processes, and validation sessions, replicating in-person creative flows in a virtual setting. We support 100+ Fortune 1000 companies digitally in creating a culture of innovation and collective creativity by connecting diverse groups of people to solve creative problems on a global scale. Our collaboration platform lets employees and organizations collect insights, discover new opportunities, and validate, implement and evolve the right solutions within a team or company. Companies can run remote workshops with a small distributed team, an entire organization spanning across the globe and beyond, engaging clients, empowering smart city communities and impact eco-systems, whether online or in-person and in real-time or asynchronously.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Founder & CEO

be-novative.com

11

SECTOR ABOUT

Canada, Finland, Germany, India, Kenya, Nigeria, United Kingdom, United States

REGIONS

Bukola is the Founder of Career Masterclass, a leading online career development platform. She started Career Masterclass when she noticed the lack of senior black role models at the organisations she worked at. She observed that while Black and Asian professionals were amongst the most educated groups in society, they were routinely found at the most junior levels in corporate organisations. To date, Career Masterclass has positively impacted the lives of 1000s of professionals, by providing access to career development content, Masterclasses, coaches and mentors on the dynamic Career Masterclass platform. Bukola also advises organisations on how to build inclusive and diverse workforces of the future. She was recently listed in the 2020 PowerList which celebrates the achievements of senior professionals from an African and Caribbean background.

Providing practical and tangible insights and tools for lifelong career growth for professionals by professionals.

Bukola Adisa

ENTREPRENEUR

Bukola Adisa

Career Masterclass The current one-size-fits-all approach to career development does not meet the needs of the dynamic and ambitious workforce of the future. Serving both individuals (B2C) and enterprises (B2B2C), Career Masterclass works to enhance their users’ skills such as negotiation, navigating workplace politics, identifying mentors and sponsors, and advocating for growth through hyper-curated content, professional development, and engagement opportunities. Their intelligent, data-driven career development platform offers an initial career assessment and then works to provide carefully selected content tailored to each individual’s career goals and learning styles. Career Masterclass’s algorithms help “unblock” those frozen in their career growth by providing access to the content and people they need to progress in their careers. They run an annual career development conference, STRETCH, for underrepresented professionals, providing a day of inspiration and learning.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Founder & CEO

careermasterclass.com

12

13

SECTOR ABOUT

India, Singapore, United Arab Emirates

REGIONS

Rohit is the Co Founder & Chairman of Classteacher Learning Systems (CTLS) which is a leading Edtech provider based out of India. The company works with over 1.5 million kids in over thousands schools significantly impacting their learning outcomes. Rohit sits on the board of Questt app which is a virally growing homework app, which seeks to process learning data into better outcomes. He is an active investor in startups across multiple domains. A graduate of the prestigious IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta and Rohit has also worked in management consulting in Germany. He is passionate about furthering the impact of education in underprivileged urban communities and is the Managing Trustee of the Iwanttolearnbetter foundation.

Providing students and educators technology to enable more effective learning outcomes.

Rohit Pande

ENTREPRENEUR

Rohit Pande

Classteacher Learning Systems Class Teacher Learning Systems (CTLS) are pioneers in interactive classroom technology in India, offering digital classroom solutions to over 1200 K-12 schools, 1.5 million students, and 75,000 educators. CTLS was founded in 1999 by two professionals on a mission to revolutionize the process of teaching, prevalent in the country. They have endeavored to blend constructivist pedagogy, innovative learning techniques, and advanced information and communication technologies to offer innovative, scalable, and affordable solutions to the education community.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Co-Founder & CEO

classteacher.com

14

15

SECTOR ABOUT

India

REGIONS

Girish comes from a strong operational background having worked in one of the world’s largest FMCG companies, Procter & Gamble. He then moved on to an investment bank in Mumbai, where he worked with global financial investors to bring investments into the Indian market. The invaluable combination of financial, as well as operations experience, led Girish to start EduBridge as he felt there was a huge opportunity in developing the untapped Indian workforce for the skill requirements of tomorrow. An IIM Bangalore graduate, Girish is passionate about developing businesses which are beneficial to society, and is most passionate about developing solutions to help the career building process of young people.

Building tomorrow’s workforce through employmentfocused vocational training.

Girish Singhania

ENTREPRENEUR

Girish Singhania

EduBridge Over the last 10 years, EduBridge has been delivering employment-focused vocational training to the PAN Indian workforce across sectors. The main goal of EduBridge is to secure employment opportunities for their students to increase household income by 100%. Their objective has been to create a talent pool that is ready to execute the skills required by businesses today, while addressing the skill gap in India.

EduBridge now operates across India through its online portal, with 90 physical Career Academies spread across 60 locations in 17 states. Their online presence received significant traction during COVID-19, and they plan to continue adding more value to their platform for youth learners seeking employment.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Founder & CEO

edubridgeindia.com

16

17

SECTOR ABOUT

Antigua and Barbuda, Gibraltar, Oman, Seychelles, United Kingdom

REGIONS

Jill began her career in the public and nonprofit sectors, supporting entrepreneurial development in immigrant communities. After completing her MBA from Wharton, she worked across various roles in the financial sector, including as an Equity Analyst for consumer goods and leisure companies, several hedge funds on the asset raising side, and as partner in a small firm networking Family Offices to fund private equity direct investments.

Jill founded Fire Tech in 2013, after realising that her own children were not being prepared to be innovators and creators in their formal education. Jill is now CEO of Fire Tech, where she spends time thinking about how to empower young people across the globe with tech skills, ensuring they will be ready to be active citizens and entrepreneurs in an increasingly digital world.

Empowering a global community of young tech creators, coders, and leaders.

Jill Hodges

ENTREPRENEUR

Jill Hodges

Fire Tech Fire Tech is on a mission to fill the ever-widening technology skills gap by mentoring and training children to be confident technologists and thoughtful leaders of our increasingly tech-enabled future.

They are the leading provider of exciting, challenging, and relevant tech education experiences for 9 to 17-year-olds in the UK, and are expanding into Europe and the Middle East. Tech-savvy instructors teach kids skills they are not receiving in school. From Python to Java, from Robotics to 3D Printing, from Digital Music Production to Creating with YouTube - their courses attract creative, inventive, curious youth. Since launching in 2013, they have delivered over 80,000 learning experiences.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Founder & CEO

firetechcamp.com

18

19

20

SECTOR ABOUT

India, Japan, Romania

REGIONS

Rajesh AR has had an interesting professional journey connecting people and building business on Education, Employment and Entrepreneurship for prosperity in his career spanning over 20 years. A firm believer in parity of education for productivity and dignity of labour, Rajesh is deeply committed to leveraging the power of work integrated training and skill development to educate the informal sector to improve their real income and productivity. Prior to LabourNet, Rajesh was one of the founding members of TeamLease services (India’s largest staffing company), where he spearheaded several key initiatives on employment generation, sourcing and temping across various industries.

He was also associated with Manipal Education, heading their employment services briefly.

Rajesh completed his MBA at Goa Institute of Management and holds an advanced diploma program from Chicago Booth. He has been associated with LabourNet at various capacities in the last 10 years, and presently heads the organization as the Co-Founder and CEO driving the vision of creating the world’s largest livelihood platform.

Improving worker skills and productivity in the informal sector through its vocational training programs, reskilling over 700,000 people in India.

Rajesh AR

ENTREPRENEUR

Rajesh AR

LabourNet According to the ILO, about 80% of India’s workforce operates in the informal economy, with 400 million people’s livelihoods depending on informal work with no social protections. Through their livelihood platform, LabourNet brings together the worlds of education, employment, and entrepreneurship to create intersections capable of mitigating poor wages and reduced productivity. LabourNet helps workers find apprenticeships, internships, and temporary or permanent employment, providing informal workers with the requisite skills, support, and strategies to start and run their own micro-enterprises, including access to financing, benefits of social entitlements, compliance services and more. Today, LabourNet has 143 livelihood centers and 912 work sites. They operate in 598 schools and have worked with 3,600 global partners across 28 industry sectors. So far, they have enabled over 750,000 people in India, with a goal to impact 10 million lives by 2022.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Co-Founder & CEO

labournet.in

21

SECTOR ABOUT

Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States

REGIONS

Rajeeb Dey MBE is Founder & CEO of Learnerbly, an award-winning curated marketplace of the best professional learning content. Learnerbly partners with progressive employers globally to create a culture of learning where employees own their professional development. Over the last 17 years he has launched three initiatives to help people advance in their working life Rajeeb is also the Co-Founder of StartUp Britain, a national entrepreneurship campaign launched by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011, and served as Trustee of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs for over 10 years. He was recognised as the world’s youngest Young Global Leader (at 26) by the World Economic Forum in 2012, received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013, and was appointed Member of the British Empire (MBE) for Services to Entrepreneurship in 2016.

Democratising access to workplace learning.

Rajeeb Dey

ENTREPRENEUR

Rajeeb Dey

Learnerbly Learnerbly is a curated marketplace of learning resources curated from 200+ of the top L&D providers (including General Assembly, PluralSight, SkillShare, Masterclass, Blinkist, Headspace, and Audible). They empower employees to own their development by connecting them to the very best professional development opportunities based on how and what they need to learn. Driven by values of employee-centricity, autonomy, and empowerment, Learnerbly is built for remote and diverse talent, providing live, on-demand, and self-paced content. Their simple UX provides effortless accessibility for both employees and employers, guided by subject matter experts, integrated into people’s flow of work, and working seamlessly with HR stacks. Learnerbly is building the go-to Enterprise Gateway Marketplace for workplace learning, helping enterprise employees cut through internal red tape and costs, and giving employees more possibilities and choices when it comes to their learning.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Founder & CEO

learnerbly.com

22

23

SECTOR ABOUT

United Kingdom, United States, Italy

REGIONS

Riccarda is the founder and CEO of EdTech company LIFEED. Milanbased social entrepreneur, she works with working parents, caregivers and companies to redefine and leverage life transitions as periods of intense, valuable learning and professional growth.

Through Lifeed, Riccarda is revolutionizing corporate training, helping companies see their employees’ life transitions as skill-building opportunities that benefit their work lives as well. Named Fortune’s Most Influential and Innovative Woman in Italy in 2018, Riccarda is an Ashoka fellow and her work has been praised in reports such as “The Skilling Challenge” and “ChangemakHERS”. She is the bestselling author of MAAM: Maternity is a Master that makes men and women stronger. She is also the mother of two amazing human beings and, against every stereotype on Italian women, a very bad cook.

Transforming life experiences into business skills to shape a world of work where everyone can fulfill their potential.

Riccarda Zezza

ENTREPRENEUR

Riccarda Zezza

Lifeed We all have a life full of transitions, that often seem to be in conflict with our professional dimension: today you can unlock and bring to work the learning potential of life events, such as becoming a mother or a caregiver, divorcing or losing a job.

Lifeed is radically innovating the way people train their soft skills through Life Based Learning: a proprietary learning methodology backed by scientific foundations and delivered through a digital platform. Lifeed digital modules allow users to improve their reflective capacity, emotional literacy and real-life practice through every life transition they experience. Furthermore, thanks to AI driven people analytics, companies can listen to their employees while they learn, extending to all their life dimensions the map of talents, skills, resources that they can use.

LIFELONG LEARNING

Founder & CEO

lifeed.io

LIFEED 24

25

SECTOR

Prior to MyVillage, Erica co-founded Zola Electric, which brings affordable, clean solar energy to more than 1 million rural Africans. Erica is a former Skoll Fellow and was recognized among the Forbes 30 Under 30 (2012). She lives in Bozeman, Montana and is the proud mom of three daughters under age 5.

ABOUT

United States

REGIONS

Erica Mackey is the CEO and co-founder of MyVillage, a female-founded, in-home childcare company that is reimagining early education for Main Street, America.

With a commitment to high quality, affordability, and greater earnings for educators, MyVillage is a network of inhome educators, families, and children committed to solving the nation’s childcare crisis.

Building a childcare system that works with a community of high-quality inhome childcare programs.

Erica Mackey

ENTREPRENEUR

Erica Mackey

MyVillage MyVillage is reinventing home-based care by bringing families and educators together to provide outstanding education in nurturing homes. Whether it’s a stay-at-home parent or someone looking for a career change, MyVillage empowers customers to start their own child care or preschool program, so they can make a big difference in little lives. MyVillage’s vision focuses on creating a higher standard of care for all kinds of families using their technology platform where they apply a Pelotonstyle education experience to early childcare givers. They train home based caregivers through cohorts based on a live training experience and then organize the educators based on location and infinity groups.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

Co-Founder & CEO

myvillage.com

26

27

SECTOR ABOUT

18 countries

REGIONS

Katharine is the founder of Odetta.ai, an on-demand outsourcing platform, enabling companies to delegate digital tasks more easily. Odetta’s mission is to provide flexible work at scale to underemployed women globally in regions where it’s needed most. Prior to founding Odetta, Katharine was an early employee and first business hire at Behalf, a venture-backed Fintech company where she ran sales and account management. Katharine started her career at Deutsche Bank in Leveraged Finance in NY and Paris, and also founded and ran a Microfinance bank in Vietnam. While in graduate studies, she helped to launch OrganJet, a healthcare company that helps patients get organ transplants faster. She holds a BA from Middlebury, MBA from Stanford and MPAID from Harvard. She is the only girl in a set of quadruplets.

Delegating and outsourcing enterprises’ recurring tasks to a digital army of female, top talent around the world.

Katharine Wolf

ENTREPRENEUR

Katharine Wolf

Odetta Odetta removes the inefficiencies that often plague traditional outsourcing platforms. Their mission is to give technology companies back their time, while providing decent work, upskilling opportunities, and community to women around the world that are often undervalued, under appreciated, and underutilized.

With Odetta, companies no longer need to spend time worrying about recruiting or project management, and can entrust Odetta to bring qualified and skilled women to their projects from their network of nearly 300 highly trained Odettians. They have built in quality assurance mechanisms from initial recruitment to contract deployment, offering 50+ trainings, certifications, and micro-credentials to their talent pool for continuous opportunities to reskill and improve. Managing a community of 6k+ women and growing, Odetta provides a robust network of mentors, skills training events, and access to workplace opportunities for women from underserved communities.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

Founder & CEO

odetta.ai

28

29

30

SECTOR ABOUT

240+ countries

REGIONS

A founder, advisor, and investor, Jamie is an Ohio State and Tulane graduate rooted in the intersection of healthcare, education, and technology. He is the co-founder and CEO of OnlineMedEd, a healthcare workforce training platform used by more than 250,000 users in 193 countries monthly. In his day job as CEO, he encourages a team of like-minded individuals to do great work and make products that improve healthcare delivery, thereby impacting the lives of millions of patients globally. He focuses on investing in his employees through coaching to keep his company culture genuine and aligned.

As an advisor and investor, he works in telemedicine, medical diagnostics, and social marketing. Jamie’s focus on culture, trust and empowerment has led him to become passionate in supporting the startup community. He helps craft narratives to attract talent, funding and business opportunities.

Making adult learning as efficient and effective as possible for medical students and health professionals.

Jamie Fitch

ENTREPRENEUR

Jamie Fitch

OnlineMedEd OnlineMedEd (OME) is one of the most widely used medical education platforms in the world, playing a key role in creating the next generation of healthcare professionals. An end-toend learning solution for both learners and institutions, it is an ecosystem composed of equal parts content, technology, and research driving it forward. The content focuses on the whole provider, delivering medical knowledge, supportive services, and the practical skills necessary to be an excellent and effective practitioner. OME is utilized by over 250,000 monthly active users in 192 countries, supporting learners becoming: doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, dentists, and more. It was founded in 2014 and is based in Austin, TX, USA.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Co-Founder & CEO

home.onlinemeded.org

31

SECTOR ABOUT

50+ countries

REGIONS

Mathieu Nebra is the co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of OpenClassrooms, the leading online education platform in Europe with more than 2 million unique visitors every month. Mathieu created the site at age 13 with the strong belief that innovation and technology can empower anyone to master digital skills. OpenClassrooms is making education accessible to all by delivering vocational training and internationally recognized degrees fully online. With a unique approach based on mastery learning, hands-on projects and individualized mentoring, the platform promotes employability for all, specifically in today’s and tomorrow’s most sought-after digital and skills jobs.

Mathieu is a key innovator in online learning and was selected as MIT Innovators Under 35.

Revolutionizing learning with skills-based, mentored degree programs targeted to in-demand professions.

Mathieu Nebra

ENTREPRENEUR

Mathieu Nebra

OpenClassrooms OpenClassrooms is an online platform offering top-quality, educationto-employment programs and career coaching services for students worldwide. A next-generation school, OpenClassrooms is 100% online with the most in-demand skills for the jobs of tomorrow available today. Different from all other online learning platforms, their Career Paths include weekly, one-on-one mentorship sessions with a dedicated professional in each field, supporting students through their studies. Additionally, they base their curriculum specifically around the competencies students need to thrive on the job. Their programs are project-driven, there are no tests or studying for exams, and all courses are self-paced. Students can earn bachelor’s and master’slevel diplomas in web development, data, IT, project management, and more. OpenClassrooms also teaches crucial soft skills such as working effectively in teams, public speaking, and learning how to learn efficiently. At the end of a diploma program, they help students find a job in their target fields through career coaching, and are so confident in their dual model that they offer a worldwide job guarantee whereby tuition fees are refunded if a student does not find a job within 6 months of graduation.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Co-Founder & CIO

openclassrooms.com

32

33

SECTOR ABOUT

75 countries

REGIONS

Jane is the Founder and CEO of TO THE MARKET, a company that connects businesses and consumers to ethically made products from around the world.

She previously served as the Director of Humanitarian Action for the McCain Institute. She has also worked in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism and in the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

Jane is a member of VF Corporation’s Advisory Council on Responsible Sourcing, CARE Board of Directors and a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Buy the Change You Want to See: Use Your Purchasing Power to Make the World a Better Place (Penguin Random House, January 2019). In 2020, Fortune Magazine named Jane one of the 25 World’s Greatest Leaders.

We exist to empower people, protect the planet, and promote better business without sacrificing speed, innovation, or digitization.

Jane Mosbacher Morris

ENTREPRENEUR

Jane Mosbacher Morris

TO THE MARKET TO THE MARKET is the turn key solution for ethical manufacturing and sourcing of apparel, accessories and home goods. Through their syndicated network of suppliers, they work with Fortune 500s, brands and retailers to provide story-rich products that appeal to the next generation of consumers with transparency, sustainability and authenticity. They enable the supply chain of the future, in which retail manufacturing empowers people, protects the planet, and delivers quality products that result in a better bottom line. With clients such as Burlington, and Nordstrom, TO THE MARKET is systemically disrupting the retail supply chain’s reliance on traditional and concentrated factories and retail businesses. By breaking down structural barriers to scale, they are bringing an unprecedented level of transparency to the retail supply chain, empowering retailers to meet the demand for ethical manufacturing at scale.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

Founder & CEO

tothemarket.com

34

35

SECTOR ABOUT

Canada, United States

REGIONS

Melvin is the Co-founder and CEO of Upswing, an organization that uses engagement software to help keep online students and adult learners on the path towards graduation. Today, Upswing supports over 500,000 students in nearly 70 colleges. Melvin grew up in south Georgia, where he was one of only 68 students to graduate out of his class of 250. This ignited his passion for finding a way to empower students to take their futures into their own hands through higher education.

After graduating from the University of Georgia, Melvin received a JD/MBA from Duke University where he started a law forum for social and educational equality. He later became a professor at North Carolina Central University, where he helped in first-year student success.

We exist to transform and disrupt the remote and distanced learning landscape for non-traditional learners.

Melvin Hines

ENTREPRENEUR

Melvin Hines

Upswing Upswing provides an intelligent virtual assistant and student services platform to reach, relate to, and retain non-traditional students. Backed by some of the biggest names in HigherEd, Upswing is driven by their mission to provide a personalized education journey for all of its learners and eliminate attrition.

Their customized engagement platform and virtual tech assistant - Anna - enables student users to accurately and efficiently identify the right campus resources for any problem. An end-toend distributed solution, Upswing instantly organizes a meeting between the appropriate campus resource and the student via SMS, which then takes place entirely on the platform. Upswing is changing the way colleges approach their non-traditional learners, a pool that is growing every year as remote work and distributed learning become the reality for so many.

DISTANCE WORK & COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Co-Founder & CEO

upswing.io

36

37

SECTOR ABOUT

60+ countries

REGIONS

Celina is the CEO and co-founder of Zindi. She has a passion for unleashing the power of data for social good. Celina has a proven track record of thought leadership in the intersect between data and development and has played central roles in the launches of global platforms including the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (www.afi-global.org), insight2impact (www.i2ifacility.org), and now Zindi (www.zindi.africa). Celina’s work has expansively bridged across the private and public sectors and across various development areas including financial inclusion, micro and small enterprise development, market system development, gender, climate change, and public health. She has lived and worked in countries throughout Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Upskilling the data science ecosystem in Africa to solve the region’s most pressing problems.

Celina Lee

ENTREPRENEUR

Celina Lee

Zindi Zindi connects organizations with the African data science community to solve the world’s most pressing challenges using machine learning and AI. With over 26,000 emerging data scientists on the platform, users come to train, upskill, and compete to strengthen their technical skills and immerse themselves in a world-class data science community. Zindi provides their partners and clients direct access to this growing talent pool through competitions, recruitment, and advertising.

From community-building and personalized learning journeys in the highly competitive fields of AI and machine learning to job placements and mentorship, Zindi is the only upskilling data science learning platform embedded in the African market and ecosystem. It has ambitions to go world-wide supporting and showcasing the data talent that exists in emerging markets and to create a more equitable and inclusive AI market.

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION/HEALTHY WORKPLACE

Founder & CEO

zindi.africa

38

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