The skills layer higher ed forgot to build. Ziplines partners with universities to hand adult learners the skills the digital economy is actually hiring for - through the schools they already trust.
There is a familiar edtech story where a startup decides that universities are slow, expensive, and obsolete, and that the fix is to route around them entirely. Ziplines Education tells the opposite story. It decided that universities have the one thing money can't buy quickly - trust - and that the interesting move is to plug into that trust rather than compete with it.
So Ziplines does something that sounds unglamorous and is, on inspection, quite clever. It builds online, cohort-based certificate courses in fields like AI, project management, digital marketing, business analytics, and Salesforce administration, and then it lets universities put their own name on them. The learner enrolls in a program branded by their local public university. Behind the curtain, Ziplines supplies the curriculum, the technology, the live instructors, and the support. The university brings the brand and the audience. Revenue gets shared. Everyone does the part they're good at.
This is a business model with a name - B2B2C, if you like acronyms - but the more honest description is that Ziplines sells credibility-as-a-service to the exact institutions that already have credibility, and outcomes-as-a-service to learners who mostly want a job. The company's own framing is tidy: it helps universities "prepare learners for what work looks like next." What's notable is that it means it fairly literally. The course catalog leans hard into AI - AI Essentials, AI for Marketing, AI for HR, AI for Data Analysis - because that is, right now, what work looks like next.
The programs are deliberately survivable for working adults. Roughly six to eight hours a week, a few weeks long, blending on-demand content with live sessions and hands-on assignments, ending in a certificate a hiring manager might actually recognize. That last part matters more than it sounds. A lot of online education optimizes for enrollment and quietly tolerates the fact that most people never finish. Ziplines reports an 80% completion rate, which in this industry is close to a bragging right.
Sara Leoni did not arrive at edtech through the usual door. She grew up with a mother at the phone company and a father who was a mechanic, earned an athletic scholarship, and made All-American in college softball in 1995. She has spent a decade-plus in and around the business of education - at BookRenter, the company that first rented college textbooks, and as CEO of Rafter, a roughly $50 million course-materials technology company serving hundreds of colleges.
The origin of the company is almost suspiciously on-message. Leoni watched one of her sons graduate from a business program in four years, then struggle to answer a simple question about what he actually wanted to do - and end up underemployed. The diploma had been earned. The career had not. That gap - between credential and capability - is more or less the entire thesis of the company she went on to build. She is, for the record, raising five boys.
The round that also marked the moment GreenFig, founded in 2017, relaunched as Ziplines Education. The name change wasn't cosmetic - it signaled a company deciding it was no longer a curriculum vendor but the skills layer between higher ed and the digital economy.
Eight months later, in October 2024, Ziplines put some of that capital to work by acquiring Clicked, an on-demand career network built around "work simulations" - exercises designed to feel like the job rather than a lecture about the job. The simulations carry an 83 NPS and have been used by 40,000+ learners; Clicked's founder Jeff Sample joined as VP of Product. In early 2025 those simulations were folded into a new Salesforce Administration certificate. The logic is unsexy and correct: the gap between "I learned it" and "I can do it" is where most education quietly fails, so you buy the thing that closes it.
Practical AI and prompting for business - content, data analysis, and workflow automation with tools like ChatGPT.
Includes Jira Software Essentials certification and hours toward PMI's CAPM credential.
Hands-on strategy across modern channels and analytics for the digital-first marketer.
Applied, tool-based analytics for people who need to make decisions with data.
Built on Clicked's work simulations, with a 4-week exam-prep sprint toward the Admin credential.
AI for Marketing, HR, Sales, and Data - short certificates aimed at the anxiety of a changing workplace.
Course formats and certification details reflect publicly available program descriptions and may vary by university partner and cohort.
The clever, boring part of the model is distribution. Rather than buy ads to reach adult learners cold, Ziplines reaches them through continuing-education divisions of institutions those learners already trust. The partner list has grown past 30 and includes Florida International University, the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Temple University, and schools across the University of Virginia, University of South Florida, UNC Charlotte, and UT Austin networks.
Each partnership works the same way: the university lends its brand and its audience, Ziplines supplies the machine underneath. FIU launched Ziplines-powered certificates in 2025 to serve South Florida's workforce; Temple expanded its offerings the same year; UMSL signed on in 2024 to push tech-adjacent skills training. For the university it's new non-tuition revenue and a workforce-relevance story to tell. For Ziplines it's a trusted front door. The specific target audience is telling: the "some-college-no-credential" adult - the millions of people who started a path, got pulled off it, and are one certificate away from re-entering the workforce.
Sara Leoni and Bruce Cleveland launch GreenFig to close the gap between traditional education and the digital workforce.
GreenFig relaunches as Ziplines Education and raises a Series A led by Jackson Square Ventures.
Ziplines acquires Clicked, integrating 83-NPS work simulations across its programs and university network.
New launches and partnerships with FIU, Temple, and others extend the network and add a Salesforce Administration certificate.
It partners with universities to deliver online, cohort-based non-credit certificate courses in high-growth fields like AI, project management, digital marketing, business analytics, and Salesforce administration.
Yes. It launched as GreenFig in 2017 and rebranded to Ziplines Education in early 2024.
It was founded by Sara Leoni, who serves as CEO, along with co-founder Bruce Cleveland.
It raised a $6.4 million Series A round in February 2024, led by Jackson Square Ventures.
Programs are cohort-based and typically require about 6-8 hours a week, blending on-demand content, live sessions, hands-on assignments, and work simulations, ending in an industry-recognized certificate.
Profile compiled from public sources including ziplines.com, PRNewswire, Forbes, NJIT, UMSL, Temple University, and the ASU+GSV Summit. Figures are approximate where noted.