Alelo was selected as a finalist in the Learning Engineering Tools Competition 2021, a $4 million prize challenge to leverage technology, data, and learning science to create new edtech tools that meet the urgent needs of learners across generations. It is one of the largest edtech competitions ever convened, sponsored by Schmidt Futures, Citadel Founder and CEO Ken Griffin, the Walton Family Foundation, the Siegel Family Endowment, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

The competition started in October 2021, finalists were announced this month, and winners will be selected in April 2022. To win, competitors must propose the most innovative tools or technologies that address pressing challenges in education. Criteria for evaluation are:

      • Potential impact and likelihood to improve learning
      • Attention to equity to support learning of historically marginalized populations
      • Ability to support rapid experimentation and continuous improvement
      • Ability to scale to additional users and/or domains
      • Team passion, and readiness to execute


Full prizes will be distributed in the Spring of 2023 after winners have refined their proposed tools and demonstrated them at a live public event and to leaders in the field.

Eight hundred global competitors made it to the Second Round of the competition, and Alelo was one of sixteen Finalists chosen in each of four categories.

Alelo is competing in two categories:

      1. Drive improvements in adult learning that boost middle-class wages. 
      2. Facilitate faster, better, and cheaper learning science research.


“We’re thrilled to be a Finalist in the Tools competition and participating in a second highly-regarded global competition paving the way for workforce development,” says Alelo CEO, Dr. W. Lewis Johnson. With its
upskilling and reskilling solution, Alelo is also a semifinalist in the $5 million XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling competition sponsored by New Profit which concludes in January 2023.

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