The CEO who innovates the tech landscape.

Wendy Kopp is the CEO and Co-founder for Teach For All. Which is a global network of independent nonprofit organizations. Wendy created this organization to expand the educational opportunities for students especially from lower income communities. She’s also the co-founder of Teach for America which is a national teaching corporation. It’s a nonprofit organization which is their mission to “enlist,develop and mobilize as many of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.” Koop has strive to make a difference in equal educational opportunities. She is the queen of equal education.

Wendy was born in Austin,Texas. Her parents owned a small business which was a newsletter company. It advertises visitors to the attractions of Austin. Later on there newsletters turned into a guidebook Which made their business successful and made Wendy and her family move around Texas. They would live in park cities areas. Which gave Wendy the opportunities to attend the most highly rated local schools. Wendy graduated from Highland Park high school. After graduating she attended Princeton University as a public policy major. At Princeton is where Wendy had more interactions with students with different diverse backgrounds. This is where she became aware of how many of the students that were from disadvantaged communities came into university unprepared.

This is where Wendy‘s passion came to help improve America‘s system of education especially in lower income areas. Wendy’s senior thesis at Princeton university was a proposal for a national service organization. Her thesis stated that recruit graduates of the nations top universities to teach in underserved areas. Her psychology professor Bresaler was very impressed by her thesis proposal. He never believed that she would get enough funds to actually create it. That is when she decided to take a chance and send her thesis “ A plan in argument for the creation of the national teacher corps” to a business leader who said he was interested in trying to improve the education system. In her senior year she met with the nation’s largest corporations to discuss her proposal. In 1989 is when Kopp graduated and received her degree from Princeton. That summer is where she spent visiting school systems, recruiting boardmembers, and donors to create Teach for America. At first Teach for America started with four staff members. By 1990 they had more than 4,000 corporation members.

The Teach for America organization has received attention nationally. It was growing rapidly and expanded all throughout the United States. Teach for All has reached more than 10,000 court members. It has helped more than 750,000 students. Wendy has received numerous awards and honors for her organization. She has received various honorary doctorates from several universities including from Princeton and Hardvard. She also received a gold medal of the Academy of Achievement in 2006.

qWendy has shared her experiences in her books. Which are about how she created Teach for America and Teach for All. She shares her vision that one day all students will have equal opportunities to have excellent education.

References:

• https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Kopp