 ready for some great inspirational words from one of our previous competing teams and an actual winner of the Adult Literacy X Prize. We have Drew Robinson on, and I'll give you a little bit of information about Drew and organization that he works for. Drew leads Learning Upgrades, Sales, Marketing and Customer Service Efforts. He has trained thousands of teachers and enrolled hundreds of thousands of students across the globe, implementing site-specific plans for fast appointments and measurable student growth and adult literacy. Drew oversees each site deployment into address-specific needs and is assisting in launching each Learning Upgrade license with training for teachers and admins. So we're really excited and very, very happy to have Drew Robinson on to give you some of his insight and his experience as a grand prize winner of an X Prize and a former competitor in a learning and workforce development related prize. Without further ado, Drew Robinson. Thank you, Monica. All right, see I'm Drew Robinson with Learning Upgrade and so to get started, I just wanna do a brief introduction for those of you that aren't familiar with what the adult literacy X Prize was and kind of what the goals were around it. So in the adult literacy X Prize, it was launched, I think it was first announced in 2016 and then the winner was announced February of 2019. So the nice thing is I have a few years to look back on the process. There's been a lot of time between being announced as the winner and where we are now. And so I know you're probably very caught up in the competition, but I also just wanna put out there that now is really the time to start thinking about your future as well because you're gonna make so many fantastic relationships and you're gonna learn so much about yourselves, your company, your process and everything that you're doing that you really wanna, as much as you're gonna be putting your nose down to also keep your eyes up. Cause there's a lot of opportunities that we've been able to take advantage of that wouldn't have come to us without the X Prize. So I just wanted to start with saying that and going back to what the adult literacy X Prize was, the goal was, we need to develop apps. We need to develop a smartphone app that can address this massive gap in access. So studies that were done, we looked there's 36 million low littered adults and with traditional avenues for adult head, we're only meeting the need of 5% of those learners. And so that's through, our traditional WIOA funded programs, adult schools, community colleges, libraries and then local literacy centers. There are some other ways to reach low littered adults but the vast majority of the funded programs are gonna be made up there. So how do we address this issue? What about the other 95%? And so the adult literacy X Prize said, let's see if companies can create an app that's gonna be number one, measurable. It can't just be a fun app, simple language acquisition, like a Duolingo or Rosetta Stone. This has to be an academic app, but it still has to be easy to use. It still has to have that consumer feel where learners can get it on their smartphones, whichever smartphone they have and then it has to be engaging. One of the key parts of the adult literacy X Prize is this is not a blended model. These learners were randomly assigned an app. This is a 12,000 student field test and they had to be able to log in, get motivated and complete these lessons between their pre-test and post-test. So we were not as a company able to be involved in that. So we really had to make sure that it was this individualized and self-paced experience. And I think that was one of the bigger parts. We have a fantastic courses, no doubt about it but I really think it was the ease of use and the engagement that drove students to complete lessons and make progress. And so that really was the goal. Starting out, we had our challenge and then they said, let's improve access number one. We wanna encourage persistence. Even in best case scenarios, you go to four year universities and drop out rates there can be 40, 45%. And so now we're talking about low literate adults who may have been in and out of education for decades and we're asking them to take this big step. They wanna take this big step. How do we keep them from getting discouraged? How do we motivate? How do we make sure that these solutions are gonna be providing them all of the assistance they need if they can't be in a synchronous blended environment? And that forced us to make a lot of changes. We had been a K-12 focused company for quite a bit of time and we had had success there but there was no explosive growth in that market. K-12 is a tough industry to be in but you can make a living. And so the adult literacy XPrize really opened our eyes to is number one is, let's see if learning upgrade can work for these adult learners. Number two, we took our completely web-based courses and built an app around it. And again, this had to be an equitable solution. So we bought all of the $50 phones on Amazon and made sure that the lowest end Android phones learning upgrade would work just as well there as it would for someone with a new iPhone. And then we started looking out. We said, okay, there's thousands of traditional education providers that use learning upgrade daily. What is it about learning upgrade that is encouraging their learners to learn? But then also we have to be a validated solution with these funded programs. And so we knew we could meet those benchmarks but could we do it without being able to interact with the learners like we are when we have teachers, admins, coordinators at these traditional schools. And so in the end, it worked out well. Our solution was the one that was the co-grand prize winners along with the team at SMU. And it's really expanded our horizon since then. We've added new courses since the X Prize. The X Prize was just focused on literacy. We've also been a math company as well. So we go all the way from kindergarten basic up to algebra. We've released GED reading and GED math. Our newest courses is now we have financial literacy. We have work life skills for those soft skills. We teach digital literacy. And then our newest course for the states here is we have our citizenship. And so our goal is really to have a well-rounded package where we can take any learner from this very low level of first exposure to English. We wanna be able to get them all the way up to this English five. And so for those of you that are familiar with the standards based here in the states, our English upgrade five, that's gonna be an NRS level five for those in the states with table 1112, that's gonna be above a 600. And then for cost us, that's about a 235. And so these are hugely important benchmarks in our funded programs, our WIOA funded programs, because this is how you get that high school equivalency. As Dr. Golden was mentioning earlier, this is critical for our job placement. Most of these programs out here, they're highly selective in who they pick. We just partnered with the coding Academy. And one of the hardest things is the coding Academy is customer acquisition. Who's ready for my coding Academy? Well, it's no surprise, not a lot of them. You need to have math skills, you need to have literacy skills before you can start coding. And so what they're finding is that there's a very small number of students who are ready for their coding Academy. Well, what we can do is we can take any learner regardless of their starting point, we'll give them an assessment, find out exactly where their current English and math skills are, and then they have a one-app solution that will get them up to proficiency. And that's that English upgrade five. For those that need a language equivalent proficiency, we also have a TOEFL and IELTS test prep. And so we can get learners ready for TOEFL and IELTS. We find that most of our learners, even if they are beginners in English literacy, are usually at a math four or five level. And again, for math four or five, there you're gonna be looking at usually a table 11, 12 at about a 550, a cost is 225. For the NRS EFL, for the ABE adult basic ed, that's gonna be a four. So our English and math courses, we line up with that NRS EFL level. We can get them all the way up to algebra there. And then again, we just wanna keep them on this path. We know that the solution to income and equality in our country is education, but the challenge is access. And so how do we provide access to every student? Our solution is that we put it on their smartphones. We don't interrupt their scheduling. We don't interrupt their daily lives. We know that there are a number of challenges to get every single learner the opportunity they need. And so I think moving into this part of the competition, you don't make it to be a finalist without having a solution. And so everybody that's a finalist, you have a solution here and now it's about execution. How do you take your solution that we know is a good one and ensure that there's usage fidelity? We ensure that you're able to deploy it. Recruiting students from start to finish, we wanna make sure that your solution is implemented in a way that's gonna highlight it at its very best. So for us, when we take a look at our deployments, we say, okay, well, what are the traditional challenges? Why is it that only 5% of adult learners are being serviced in traditional adult head? It's pretty straightforward, transportation's an issue. When we're talking about low income, not everybody has a car. Anybody that's looked at gas prices in the last week knows what a challenge it is. Even having a short drive, it's very expensive. We know that scheduling is a challenge. These are individuals that usually have multiple jobs. They have families to take care of. They have children at home. And so if we say, hey, you have to be in class at three o'clock, that's just not a solution for many of our learners. So we see that there's a small group that can actually access that. For our digital solutions, we wanna make sure that device access is equitable as well. Again, make sure whatever your solution is, if it is digital, if it can't be done offline, that it's low bandwidth. And then if it is being done on mobile devices, make sure that you're actually doing your R and D on the lowest end smartphones, the lowest end tablets. Cause what you don't wanna do is what a lot of programs find out is, hey, I'm doing it on my latest Android and iOS phones that have the latest operating system and it works fantastic. But then you go back to those four year old operating system for Android and other countries and it's buggy and that is really demoralizing to a lot of our learners. You're making good progress and now it's actually a technology issue that financially you just can't afford to overcome. And then there's the engagement and fidelity. And this is, again, this is built into your program. So what brings the learners back? Is it fun? Is it engaging? Are you relying on a synchronous model where you actually have tutors and volunteers working with the learners? If you don't have that synchronous, make sure that your ASync model engages the learners, keeps them logging in, make sure you have some kind of a notification system and that you're working to continue ensuring that the learners are getting into your program. And then there's placement. So in our part of the education world, our goals are a little bit different. So we're not actually working on placement. That's what you're working on. So that end goal is fixed. It's finite and it's very easy to communicate. And so I think that's gonna be something here that'll be a little bit easier than we find because when we're talking about GED, high school equivalency, that's the middle goal. But then after that, now we're looking at placement, we're looking at job training. And so the fact that you have that end goal really focus on that because that is one of the most empowering tools that I think we have in education is anybody that's gone through a job search, even all of us on here, maybe you were fresh out of college, but you put an application after application after application, you get denied. And for those low income learners, that can be incredibly demoralizing, feel like there's no hope. And so this XPRIZE, your programs are providing that hope. You go through this program, you acquire these skills and you have this new trajectory in your life. You have that new path. And so how do we get there? How do we get these programs to scale? How do we get those programs to grow? So one of the big ones, and this is the beauty of XPRIZE is funding. And so one of the major challenges is a company, as an organization, as a nonprofit, is funding. It's one of the things none of us like to really talk about, but it's just a reality. And XPRIZE provided us the funding that we probably wouldn't have been able to get without giving up a large percentage of our company back in 2019. So we joke in the company, XPRIZE was the funding without giving up part of the company. And it really is what makes learning upgrade, learning upgrade today. There wouldn't be the learning upgrade today without XPRIZE. And not even the funding or the prize money, the brand recognition and the notoriety that comes with being a part of this competition is massive. You go to any funders talk, you'll go to the YPO summit, you'll talk to people at different conferences and they may not know the name of your company yet, but I guarantee you they will know the name of XPRIZE and being a finalist or a winner of these competitions really resonates. It opens a lot of doors for you. So make sure you make those relationships and don't forget that this really is a worldwide brand that everybody does know. So now as you wanna grow and scale your program, that funding is gonna be important. And the one thing we always keep in mind in education is that your customer is not always your end user. And so this is something that our traditional education platforms, language acquisitions and other tech companies don't have to deal with. And so we are a B2C company. We do sell the learning upgrade app directly to consumers in the app store, but the vast majority of our business is B2B. And so that's knowing those WIOA funded programs. So we do sell directly to adult schools, community colleges. It's through self-funded programs like literacy centers. We do work with grants and then other state approved programs. We work with LA Public Library, Sacramento, Queens and other large library systems. And so that's gonna be a big one as you move outside of XPRIZE. You know, you have a viable solution and for funding, most of your solutions will probably fall under that WIOA umbrella. Data and validation. And so a lot of our R&D over the last two years has gone into building an industry-leading LMS. We find that for a lot of the grants, everybody wants granular data. And so that starts with a pre-test. We wanna take an assessment when the learner enters our program. We wanna know their exact English and math proficiency. And then as they work through our program, we wanna see every single one of their growth levels across subtest scores in math and English. And then of course you have that post-test, what we call the final challenge and that's gonna give them another granular test. So we're able to report from the moment a learner comes into our program until the very end across every subset score. And again, that's gonna be critical for your teams as well as you go for this job placement because as you provide these individuals to job boards or directly at companies, you wanna make sure that you're providing students, number one, that are qualified for these jobs. You're gonna be building these relationships long-term. It's important for your relationship with the company. That's also important for your relationship with these students to make sure that they do actually have these skills that make them job-ready. And then knowing your niche. This is something that's critical for us as a company. We offer math, we offer high school equivalency, we have financial literacy, but when we present learning upgrade, we're an ESL company. And so we know that that's where the funding is. We know that that's where the interest is. And so we really focus on ESL. So a lot of companies offer a lot of things, but as you move past F-prize, you start moving in and building your businesses, know your niche and know where the funding comes from. And a lot of that's gonna dial down for, is it a regional, is it national, is it international? So national, again, that's CASAS TAVE, NRS College and Career Readiness. Lately we've been growing a lot in the international and that's CEPHR, so that common European framework. And we actually just talked to one of the larger job placement companies in Europe based out of France. And so we're partnering now to provide English and math training, and then they're gonna be able to help them get jobs across Europe. And it can be daunting. And the reason I bring up that partnership is partners are what's helped us reach new markets. So when Adulted, we knew we couldn't build up the Salesforce to really get to where we needed to be. And so we partnered with Pro Literacy. So Pro Literacy is the largest nonprofit in adult education. They have a publishing arm called New Readers Press and they distribute learning upgrade for Adulted. For K-12, we have Let's Go Learn. And so learning upgrades very popular for IEP students, special ed. The issue with IEP students is they need really granular assessment. This is the kind of assessment we can't provide. These are hours long assessments. So Let's Go Learn has the assessment and then they provide learning upgrade. And Guru, this is the founder of Google Maps, Prasad Ram. He started this company, Guru. This is an LMS and they've integrated learning upgrade there and they're growing quickly. And then our biggest one is I move into the end here is just impact. What has XPRIZ helped us to do? And I hope every finalist on the call here will eventually be able to do is just reach the largest number of students. And so recently we partnered with Focus Humanitarian Assistance that's a part of the Aga Khan Foundation. And so they reached out to us last year and said, we'd really like to provide ESL for the Afghan refugees. And so let's work together and put together a program. And so one of the challenges they had was just their solutions weren't scalable. Cost was a massive issue and they were trying to have tutors in Canada get paired with refugees to teach them English. And they were maxing out at about a one to five ratio. The other challenge is they had to have educators. And so what we've been able to do with learning upgrade is now they can just have volunteers and they're working at a one to 50 ratio and we're pushing that to one to 75 and one to 100. And so one of the big reasons we've been able to do this is we started working with WhatsApp. And with WhatsApp, what we're able to do is in our LMS we can create a group of students that instantly creates a WhatsApp group. And so that builds a sense of community even for learners that aren't together. So they can talk to each other, they can motivate each other, they can share their experience with learning upgrade. And then the admins and the volunteers can also do push notifications. So even though they're in Toronto, Vancouver, wherever they may be, they can instantly send out login credentials to learners across the world. And so we started with about 1500 learners. We just hit 10,000 and now we're growing. We just started working with the GCC countries. We're in India, refugees also in Greece. And so again, none of this would have been possible without X-Prize. We didn't have an app before X-Prize. We weren't really thinking to go outside of K-12, outside of Adult Head. But what we saw with X-Prize and kind of what X-Prize forced us to do with our courses is the main reason any of this is even possible. Same thing with workforce around the world, public housing, YMCA churches. One of the things that was unique about the Adult Literacy X-Prize is after the competition, that's when things really began for us because then that began what we call the Communities Competition. And the Communities Competition is what allowed pretty much any Adult Head provider here in the United States to use the finalist or semi-finalist apps and then compete to see who had the most hours and then they would receive cash prizes as well. And so we learned a lot in the Communities Competition about deployment, usage, fidelity and everything there. And that's really been one of the driving forces behind our growth in our traditional markets which is Adult Head K-12. But the biggest one now is this refugees around the globe. We just started working with Lears. So the Lutheran refugee started talking to Jesuit refugee services. And so our real passion today and in the months ahead is really with refugees. And again, we just wanna thank X-Prize for having me on today, but also for really being the catalyst for all of our motivation and desire to build a product that works for all of these different learners. And so that's it for me. If anyone has any questions, I'd be more than happy to ask or you can scan my QR code to send me messages on LinkedIn or anything you wanna do. Yep, thank you, Drew. And feel free, we do have time to ask Drew some questions. So if anything picked your interest, have a question based on anything that he shared from his experience, please do feel free to ask the question. We'll make sure we fill those questions or unmute the mic. Oh wait, they can unmute their mic, sorry. It's sitting in the chat or the Q&A. So as I worked on the adult literacy X-Prize, that's the first project that X-Prize I worked on when I got here. And so I'm always being able to pride to see one of my team babies. And I'll call you that forever. One of my team babies doing very well outside of the competition. And I'll often tell Abreed how you grow and you move over years with these teams. You're so invested. When I first met them, I ran and hugged them and cried. Like I'm just so proud. And so I even being right now, just being able to see Drew come back and give you his experience. And I'm glad it was a positive one. They were an A-team. They really put forth the effort. Sometimes they say, you get what you put into an opportunity. And learning upgraded as a team really put a lot into the opportunity and they made it work for them. Yeah, and I will say that is, say yes to everything. Every single post-meeting, every ex-prize alumni, every opportunity say yes. And that's one of those things when we had the, I think it was the pilot for the YPO presentations is we were partnered with a business leader that really helped us fine tune our pitch. And so even though we weren't looking for funding, we had an opportunity to meet with somebody to help us fine tune the pitch. And those meetings, those five meetings, just radically changed how we present learning upgrade. And then through the YPO presentations, we met with a gentleman, Mariano Gonzalez, that of New York. And again, he worked for a company, Emergent Ventures. And most of his investments were in packaging, but he just wanted to kind of give back. And so he volunteered to mentor us for the last year. And he's actually now on our board. We enjoyed the experience with Mariano. And he's been again, one of the driving forces for us with a lot of the nonprofits and our ability to grow globally. And that relationship with Mariano, just, it just would have never happened without ex-prize and the introduction to YPO. And just saying yes to every opportunity, present at every conference, every webinar, any chance you have. The beautiful thing about ex-prizes, even when an alumni meeting is about the Lunar ex-prize, there's just so many incredible people that join each one of these meetings that provide feedback and insight and just general encouragement that you really don't get anywhere else. And so our projects might be completely different. They're not interested in education in the way we are. A lot of the times we don't understand their solutions in a granular way either, but the ex-prize gives you the big picture, it gives you the motivation and it gives you the ability to just reach out and find out how we can help each other. Yeah, thank you. And I stand corrected. You are able to unmute yourselves and ask questions. So if you have a question or a statement, or as I always say, a joke, feel free to unmute yourselves and we can open up the floor. We're so quiet today, we're overwhelmed. That was a good laugh. Well, then I hope, if there's no questions, I hope I see everyone on the ex-prize alumni webinars going forward. They've been incredibly valuable for us. And it's, I don't know if Dan is a part of any of this project, but Dan's incredible. Hopefully you get a chance to meet Dan as well. And then Monica, thank you. We miss seeing you at all the conferences. I know. Will you be at CoAVE? I will be at CoAVE in Seattle. We will be at CoAVE. We will bring representatives from the five finals. We'll have a panel there and we'll also have the opportunity on the main stage to introduce them to the CoAVE ecosystem. So I know pandemic, the usual tour isn't out, but we're hoping this year that we're able to bring the teams and members of our operations team out to a couple of conferences through the end of this year. So you'll see us in a couple of places. Fantastic. Well, I look forward to seeing everybody in Seattle and that's incredible. I'm so glad that we can get at least one in-person event this spring. Yeah, that is so true, so true. So if there's anything else, no? And some of the teams do know Dan. We also have teams involved in YPO, a few of them are. So they do know Dan. And so I'm glad that you talked about YPO because it gives the teams more of a longer view into how an introduction or initial talk with a YPO or can move into a very great benefit for your company and for your product overall. And so some of the same opportunities we were able to leverage during the adult literacy XPRIZE we've brought here into rapid re-skilling as well because it's in the same little house, CTE Workforce Development and Adult Education are literally like cousins. We joined at the hip. There's a natural progression through the two. So I don't know if a lot of our teams have been very steeped and into the adult basic education industry and go to a lot of those events such as COA, Pro Literacy, TALA, Literacy, Texas and all of those things, but being able to bring them to the table and get them in those spaces is very important for what they do in the competition and beyond. Absolutely, that's enough. Maybe the questions aren't here now, but if in a week or two, a month, you're working on a problem in just one event or we wanna see how we maybe address the similar challenge or again, just like XPRIZE and YPO, even if it's something that might not seem that's in our wheelhouse, we interact with everybody at this level and so we might know the people that you need to know and so always feel free. XPRIZE is a family and so just reach out and if we know someone that can help you, we'd be more than happy to make those connections as well. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to jump on today. We appreciate it. Tell your family, I said hi. Yeah, sweet people. Other than that, Grieve, is there anything we wanna talk about before we just plug what's coming up in the open session coming up in the next hour? Just let me know. One important note for tomorrow's session, so it's tomorrow's day two, we're gonna be continuing our summit and again, as you all know, that's the floor that you all have as the finalist teams. Those speakers are presenting each team or receive an email confirming their link, how to log in and all the details for tomorrow including an updated call time of 8.30 a.m. Pacific. So again, if the speakers are on now, team leads, if you could relay that, they will get an email not to worry that haven't missed anything in their inbox. We'll be set later today. Cool, thank you so much for that. Other than that, we'll get back to these slides and then we have one slide that's plugging what's coming up and what you guys can expect. So 11.30 PT, see what time is that, about 1.30, 2.30 Eastern Standard. We will pick off the public session. Bree just placed the link for this next session in the Zoom chat. You already have it, but we wanna make sure we shared it again with you guys. So check out the Zoom. We're just gonna make sure that we have some updates. We'll do a prize overview, giving people information about the prize overall. I'm sure you've heard it, you've lived it since 2020. We're gonna have a room to make that on from our sponsor giving a talk about some really great words about achieving scale and re-scaling from Neesh Uchariah. We'll also have a great panel where we'll have people talking about perennial issues in the industry. So some of the things that you guys may have asked questions about previously, such as adult learning engagement, partnerships and funding, advances in ed tech. We hope to talk about WIOA because that's something very important. You heard me talk about it in ways you can make sure that your solution is approved and able to be used with WIOA funding from school districts, any kind of agency that receives that federal funding. And also advances in ed tech. You guys are ed tech entrepreneurs. What's happening on the streets with AI, robotics, VR, the things that you're doing that can be shared with other people. It's groundbreaking. Vice versa, what you can learn and incorporate to make your product better. So we're really excited to have this opportunity to kick off the open session, have the public come in, learn more about rapid reskilling and really get some really great insight and education in regards to the things that I just mentioned. If there is nothing else, I'll send it back over to Bree and our behind the scenes team of David and Elizabeth. Thank you so much for being the wizard behind the curtain to move everything forward for our technical behind the scenes. And I wanna thank David and John if you confirm. Of course, director Golden and Bree, we had our marketing team on. Kayden, Arno, Caterina, as well as Anusha who popped in for some live remarks earlier from a bank lobby. She's so committed. So we're thankful that you guys came on and we're excited to continue the rest of this team summit. If nothing else, I'll pass it back over to Bree and we can all take a break. Yeah, that's it. Thanks, Monica. Thank you everyone. And we'll see you again at 1130 to have any questions from now until then feel free to reach out. Otherwise you're looking forward to continuing the rest of our finalist team summit. Take care.