HIVE - Harvard GSE Innovation & Ventures in Education

Congratulations to the incredible winners of HIVE 2026! 🎉💡
So inspired by the creativity, passion, and impact each team brought to the stage.
🏆 1st Place: Heels and Tech – Bisola Alabi
🥈 2nd Place: Boston Youth Farm – Oliver Homberg
🥉 3rd Place: Colombiando – Valeria Ortiz
👏 Audience Choice: Kaw Academy – Mike Bellot
The future of innovation is bright ✨

What a turnout 🔥 What an amazing time at the HIVE Competition! Hearing these venture pitches was next level so much innovation, creativity, and passion in one room 💡✨

🐝 Get ready for HIVE 2026!!
Join us for the Annual Pitch Competition hosted by Harvard Graduate School of Education Innovation & Ventures in Education. Watch inspiring founders pitch game-changing ideas in education, support your favorites, and help decide who takes home the prize 🏆
April 3
4:00–6:30 PM EST
Askwith Hall + Zoom
$10,000 in prizes
Audience Choice Award
Powerful pitches. Big ideas. Real change.
Come support. Come be inspired.
StartupLife FutureOfLearning

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if every child could be truly seen and understood during the hours families spend apart? 🌱👶
Irori, co-founded by Hisako and Salomey, is an AI platform unlocking the “black box” of early childhood development. Built from firsthand experience in AI product leadership and education systems, Irori addresses a simple but powerful gap: what children are actually experiencing in preschool each day. In just 30 seconds, teachers can capture key observations from the classroom.
Irori then transforms these insights into warm, personalized developmental updates for parents grounded in CDC milestones and child development science.
Designed for impact, Irori responds to real system challenges in Japan, where teacher documentation contributes to burnout and parents often receive generic, unhelpful updates.
30 seconds from a teacher.
A meaningful insight for a parent.
Every child, truly seen.
Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
EdTech ChildDevelopment FamilyEngagement TeacherSupport

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if education policymakers could turn complex global data into clear, actionable insights in seconds?
Beacon, founded by Ruben Del Muro, is an open-source AI copilot designed to support education decision-making at scale.
Beacon helps policymakers quickly analyze global education data and generate policy briefs using natural language queries.
Instead of spending weeks synthesizing reports, users can instantly explore insights, compare trends, and translate data into actionable policy guidance.By making advanced analysis more accessible, Beacon supports faster, more informed decision-making in education systems worldwide.
🌍 Data. Insight. Policy powered by AI.
🎤 Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
DataDrivenPolicy EducationSystems FutureOfEducation

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if women across Africa had equitable access to the digital economy and the power to lead it?
Bisola Alabi, founder of Heels and Tech, is advancing women’s economic participation through education, technology, and innovation.
Through her platform, thousands of women have gained digital and tech skills unlocking career transitions, re-entering the workforce, and accessing global opportunities.
With over $12.5 million in aggregate earnings generated, Heels and Tech is not just creating access it’s driving real economic mobility.
By combining education, financing through HT-Pay, and innovation via FemNest Labs, the venture tackles systemic barriers like caregiving responsibilities, financial exclusion, and underrepresentation in tech.
Bisola’s work sits at the intersection of gender equity, technology, and policy ensuring women are not just participants in the digital economy, but leaders shaping its future.
✨ Equity. Access. Leadership. Powered by women.
🎤 Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
GenderEquity DigitalInclusion EconomicEmpowerment SocialImpact AfricaInnovation FutureOfWork

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if education spoke your language and unlocked real economic opportunity? 🌍📚
Mike Bellot, founder of Kaw Academy, is transforming access to education in Haiti through one of the largest Creole e-learning platforms.
Through partnerships with global organizations like Google and Microsoft, Kaw Academy delivers accessible training in digital skills, business, and technology to tens of thousands of learners.
More than a learning platform, Kaw Academy is an opportunity ecosystem connecting education to entrepreneurship and employment. From free courses to professional diploma programs, and initiatives like Kaw Biz that support launching real businesses, learners don’t just study they build.
By removing barriers like language, cost, and access, Kaw Academy is empowering underserved communities in Haiti and beyond to create sustainable careers and businesses.
Access. Opportunity. Transformation. Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
DigitalSkills Entrepreneurship Haiti AccessToEducation 🐝📚

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if social programs could be tested before they ever reached a community? 🌍
Village Labs, founded by Daril Ndodjang, is reimagining how organizations design and implement social programs by using AI to simulate human behavior and community response. By combining field engagement with advanced AI modeling, Village Labs builds virtual representations of communities. Capturing how people think, speak, and make decisions. Organizations can then test different program designs inside this simulated environment, observing real-time responses: what communities accept, what they resist, and why.
This approach allows teams to refine programs before launch reducing failed pilots, saving resources, and deepening understanding of community needs.
Founder Daril Ndodjang brings 8+ years of experience from the French automotive industry, where he used simulation to test how mechanical systems perform under real-world stress before building prototypes.
Now, he applies the same principle to social systems modeling how people interact with development programs to design more effective, human-centered solutions.
Design smarter. Test earlier. Build better systems for real communities.
🎤 Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
HumanCenteredDesign PublicPolicy Innovation FutureOfWork VillageLabs 🐝

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if rural schools became thriving hubs of collaboration and discovery? 🌿
Valeria Ortiz, co-founder of Colombiando, is reimagining education in rural Colombia by transforming invisible one-room, multigrade schools into dynamic learning ecosystems.
🌱 After spending a year living and volunteering in multigrade classrooms, Valeria co-created an instructional model designed specifically for multigrade teachers—one that shifts learning from copying to collaboration.
📚 Through Colombiando’s approach, students don’t just memorize. They engage, collaborate, and think critically, creating the conditions for deeper, more meaningful learning.
🚀 By supporting teachers with practical, context-driven tools, Colombiando helps rural schools become vibrant learning hubs without adding extra burden to educators.
✨ And the vision goes even further, building scalable, adaptable models that can strengthen multigrade education systems across regions and communities.
🌍 Equity. Collaboration. Transformation. All in one classroom.
🎤 Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
TeacherSupport GlobalEducation SystemChange MultigradeLearning 🐝🌿

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
From a small rural classroom to a scalable tech solution, meet Clarky’s Cash 💡
What started as a paper-based classroom economy in an under-resourced district is now being transformed into a powerful financial literacy tool for students who need it most.
In Parish, New York, 4th grade teacher Courtney Clark created a system where students earn paychecks, pay bills, and make real decisions about saving and spending. It changed how her students understood money but it wasn’t easy to sustain by hand.
Enter James Carnes, a Strategy Analyst at Apple and HGSE student, who saw the potential to scale this impact.
Together, they reimagined Clarky’s Cash as an iOS app complete with Apple Wallet integration, tap-to-pay, automated payroll, and real-time balances. With AI handling the logistics, teachers can focus on what matters most: teaching.
✨ Because every student deserves access to financial tools that set them up for life.
🚀 Stay tuned as they take the stage at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
FinancialLiteracy EdTech EquityInEducation InnovationInEducation StudentImpact

🐝 HIVE 2026 Finalist Spotlight 🐝
What if farming came to the classroom? 🌱
Boston Youth Farm Project (BYFP) is reimagining how students learn about food, health, and the planet, by bringing mobile vertical farms directly into schools.
🥬 In just three weeks, students grow their own food while learning:
Where food comes from
How it impacts their health
How their choices affect the environment
At a time when only 1 in 10 Americans eats enough fruits and vegetables, BYFP is tackling nutrition literacy early through hands-on, joyful learning.
🚀 With a turnkey model led by trained instructors, BYFP removes the burden on teachers while making it easy for schools and districts to scale impact.
✨ And the vision doesn’t stop there! BYFP aims to become an open-source model, empowering communities everywhere to grow their own solutions.
🌍 Education. Health. Climate. All in one classroom.
🎤 Catch them at the HIVE 2026 Pitch Competition!
ClimateEducation EdTech EquityInEducation SustainableFuture 🐝🌱

Join us for HIVE Pitch Practice, a supportive space to meet, mix, mingle, and pitch your ideas before HGSE’s Annual Pitch Competition!
🗓 March 11th
⏰ 3–4 PM
📍 Larsen 203
🍽 Food provided
Register at the link in bio!