Heejae Lim

Activist, Brainstormer, Business leader, Change Agent, Connector, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Social entrepreneur, Startup, Technologist

Heejae is the founder and CEO of TalkingPoints, an education technology nonprofit with a mission to drive student success by unlocking the superpower of families to fuel children’s learning, especially in underserved communities. She founded TalkingPoints based on her experience growing up as a Korean immigrant and seeing her mother make a difference in her education because she had the ‘voice’ to do so. For the past decade, Heejae has been committed to making a scalable, systemic solution for engaging families in education. Through the power of AI, TalkingPoints transforms a cell phone into a tool that enables two-way communication in 150+ languages, coaches schools and families on how to improve students’ attendance, standardized test scores, and course proficiency, and provides actionable data and insights to change education for the better. Previously, Heejae advised the Gates Foundation and Teach First UK at McKinsey & Company and worked on education reform by serving as chief of staff to a special advisor to the Secretary of Education in the UK. She holds a B.A. from Oxford University, an M.A. from the London School of Economics with distinctive honors, and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Heejae has been recognized as a 2022 TED Fellow, Forbes 30 Under 30 for Education, Echoing Green Fellow, Stanford Social Innovation Fellow, Ashoka Changemaker, and Elevate Prize Winner, among others.

I’m passionate about the power of human connection to help fulfill one’s potential and for education to be the gateway to integrate, celebrate, and empower under-resourced, immigrant and multicultural communities.

Engaging families in their children's education is the key to student success and educational equity. And, technology can make family-school partnership effective, equitable, and scalable in support of each and every student, no matter their background.

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Communication, EdTech, Education, Entrepreneurship, Families, Family Engagement, Learning, Machine Learning, Schools, Social Impact, Technology, Translation