Joe Wolf

Athlete, Change Agent, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Parent, Philanthropist, Social entrepreneur, World traveler

Joe Wolf is Co-CEO and Co-founder of Imagine Worldwide. Joe is passionately committed to eliminating global educational inequity through scalable solutions and he has dedicated the past decade of his career to launching, supporting, and leading educational philanthropies and nonprofit organizations. Joe co-founded Imagine to help all children achieve the foundational literacy and numeracy skills they need to achieve their full potential. Imagine’s child-directed, tech-enabled learning solution is massively scalable, evidence-based, and serves the most marginalized children. Joe co-founded The Learning Accelerator and Open Up Resources, two highly successful nonprofits focused on innovation and equity in the U.S. K-12 market. He has also served on the boards of the Clayton Christensen Institute, NPX Advisors, Summer Search, New Classrooms, and the New Schools Venture Fund. Joe is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and Harvard Business School. He has three school-aged children, is a mountain biker and meditator, and loves all things in the natural world. Joe is based in California, USA.

I’m passionate about unlocking human potential at scale—especially for the hundreds of millions of children who have the talent, curiosity, and drive to learn, but not the opportunity due to scarcity of resources. Education is the foundation for a healthy, prosperous and peaceful life. Outside of work, I’m passionate about surrounding myself with high frequency people that are striving to make the world a better place. I have a wonderful family and spend as much time as I can in nature.

Talent Is Universal, But Opportunity Is Not. Over the past decade, I’ve been focused on a simple but urgent question: how do we bring high-quality learning to the world's most vulnerable and under-served children? That journey led to co-founding Imagine Worldwide and working alongside governments and partners across Africa to reach millions of children in some of the lowest income countries in the world. I’m energized by the idea that we can take what works—proven, evidence-based approaches—and make it radically more accessible, affordable, scalable and sustainable. Technology, when designed for purpose and equity, can help us leapfrog traditional barriers and reach millions of learners who have been left behind. We have the ultimate use case for tech for good and welcome ideas and partnerships. Check out our 1 minute video here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hi1U_-6Xko

Imagine is deeply honored and humbled to be a 2025 grantee of the Audacious Project. Together with our government partners and funders, we will scale over the next 5 years to over 4 million annual learners across Malawi, Tanzania and Sierra Leone annually. Audacious provides us with 40% of the funding necessary to reach these goals and we are now seeking partnerships to provide the rocket fuel needed to reach and exceed our goals.

Backgammon. Watch your wallet if you play me.