Written by Julie Clugage, Team4Tech Co-Founder and Executive Director
It was exciting to be recognized this week by Inc. Magazine as a 2025 Top Female Founder. I felt grateful and also reflective as I looked back on our journey over the past 12 years to build Team4Tech into the organization it is today. There have been many ups and downs, but mostly I am amazed that we are now able to accelerate the impact of 1,000 nonprofit organizations across 90+ countries with technology grants and training, as they build employability skills for their 43M learners.
When my co-founder Lila Ibrahim (COO Google Deepmind) and I launched Team4Tech in 2013, we set an ambitious goal to make a meaningful difference for 100,000 learners over 10 years by providing technology grants and training to community-based organizations who were already doing great work in education but were being left behind by the rapid pace of change in the tech sector. In the early 2000s, Lila had built a computer lab at the orphanage where her father was raised in Lebanon, and I had done the same at the school where I volunteered in Guatemala. We had both seen what a difference it could make when students were able to learn basic digital skills in terms of preparing them for university studies and knowledge sector jobs.
Over our first seven years at Team4Tech, we partnered with 53 NGOs across 21 countries and we reached 130,000 learners through our projects, passing our initial goal three years ahead of schedule. Around the same time, the COVID pandemic led to a 10x increase in the number of NGOs who were applying for our support, as they all needed to leverage technology to reach their learners in a virtual world. We realized we needed to find a way to support exponentially more community organizations around the world to make a real difference in bridging the digital equity gap in education. So we launched Team4Tech’s online community of practice, a free space for all nonprofits working in education for employability, to learn and share about technology tools and evidence-based educational practices and to get support in testing and implementing solutions.
We have always approached the work with a human-centered design perspective, prioritizing the needs and perspectives of local stakeholders in formulating solutions. To deepen our relationships on the ground in the regions we serve, we hired local staff in Kenya, India, Brazil, and across the US.
And, we’ve really honed our model to focus on co-designing solutions with nonprofit staff to implement capacity-building programs that result in more engaged learners, effective pedagogy, and improved use of technology. Our nonprofit accelerator programming connects learning to employability skills, a comprehensive skill set including digital, innovation, social-emotional, and cognitive skills necessary for high-quality jobs in the knowledge economy.
Through monitoring and evaluation, we help our nonprofit partners measure progress and improve programs integrating employability skills into holistic curricula. Our partners achieve goals advancing educator and learner growth, learner engagement, and organizational sustainability and scale. These positive outcomes help them expand their regional educational ecosystems, enabling millions of learners to demonstrate digital readiness, master foundational skills, and prepare for employment opportunities. By July 2028, we want Team4Tech’s accelerator programming to build employability skills for 60M learners by supporting 1100+ community-based nonprofits.
Building a social enterprise start-up is not easy, but I am grateful for the opportunity to work towards a more inclusive future. Many thanks to everyone who is partnering with us on this journey!