equity-in-education
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The Startup That Texts College Dropouts Before They Drop Out
Melvin Hines was one of 68 kids in his high school class to graduate. He built Upswing so the other students - the adult learners, the first-gen, the ones nobody texts back - get a fair shot at the finish line.
Ilana Walder-Biesanz
Ilana Walder-Biesanz is the founder and CEO of National Math Stars, a nonprofit that finds mathematically extraordinary children as early as second and third grade and gives each of them a decade of mentorship, advising, and funding worth more than $100,000. A child prodigy herself who took college courses at 13 and finished her undergraduate degree at 19, she pairs an engineer's rigor with a theater critic's flair. Before building National Math Stars she was a product manager at Yahoo, a Bain consultant, a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a Fulbright researcher of German opera staging, and a working opera critic. In December 2025, Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Bezos named her one of five recipients of a $5 million Courage & Civility Award.
Ahsan Rizvi
Ahsan Rizvi is the CEO and co-founder of Kiddom, a San Francisco-based education technology platform that has become the first all-in-one solution for high-quality digital curricula in K-12 schools. Born and raised in Pakistan, he came to the US after passing a grueling 1-in-1,100 entrance exam at age 12, an experience that shaped his lifelong commitment to the transformative power of education. After earning degrees in Industrial Engineering and Public Policy from the University of Illinois, he co-founded Kiddom in 2015 with his college friend Abbas Manjee. The company has raised $56.5M in total funding, grown to 220 employees, and now has at least one teacher using its platform in 70% of US schools.
Anurupa Ganguly
Anurupa Ganguly is the founder and CEO of Prisms, a spatial learning platform that uses virtual reality to teach core math and science to middle and high school students. A former math and physics teacher with degrees from MIT and Boston University, she built Prisms after a decade-plus in education leadership at Boston Public Schools and the NYC Department of Education. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz with $18.4M raised, Prisms now reaches 300,000+ students across 300+ school districts in 35 states, delivering measurable gains in algebra and science comprehension through embodied, problem-driven VR experiences.