Heejae is the founder and CEO of TalkingPoints, an education technology nonprofit with the mission to drive student success by unlocking the potential of families to fuel their children’s learning, especially in underserved communities. We do this by building meaningful connections between schools, teachers and families through accessible technology. Heejae founded TalkingPoints based on her personal experience growing up as a Korean immigrant student and seeing her mother be able to make a difference in her education because she had the ‘voice’ to do so. Previously, Heejae advised the Gates Foundation and Teach First UK at McKinsey & Company, and worked on education reform to drive data-driven decision-making for public schools in the Middle East and served as chief of staff to a special advisor to the Secretary of Education in the UK. Heejae also worked on the development of Aspire Public Schools’ teacher training program, which is now Alder Education. In addition, as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, she led multiple due diligence processes for consumer and retail M&A clients. Heejae has earned a B.A. from Oxford University, an M.A. in International Development from the London School of Economics both with distinctive honors, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arjay Miller Scholar. She has also been recognized as an Echoing Green Fellow, Stanford Social Innovation Fellow, Roddenberry Fellow, Ashoka Changemaker, and Forbes 30 Under 30 for education. Read about her work on EdWeek , Forbes and 74Million .