How Shai Reshef Is Empowering Refugees and Underserved Students with Free College Education

Summary

Leap Academy with Ilana Golan: Episode Summary

Episode: How Shai Reshef Is Empowering Refugees and Underserved Students with Free College Education
Release Date: April 15, 2025

In this inspiring episode of Leap Academy with Ilana Golan, host Ilana engages in a profound conversation with Shai Reshef, the visionary founder of University of the People. Shai shares his transformative journey from modest beginnings to establishing the world’s first tuition-free accredited online university, which has empowered over 153,000 students globally, including refugees and underserved communities.

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1. Introduction to Shai Reshef and University of the People

Ilana Golan opens the episode by highlighting the significant impact of Shai Reshef’s work:

“When you educate one person, you can change your life. But if you educate many, you can change the world.”
[00:36]

Co-host elaborates on Reshef’s achievements:

“Shai Reshef, the founder of University of the People. He created the first tuition-free accredited online university. He has provided access to higher learning for over 153,000 students worldwide.”
[00:41]

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2. Shai Reshef’s Early Life and Inspiration

Shai recounts his upbringing in a modest family and his early struggles with education:

“I grew up in a modest family and I went to school. I was not the best in class. I had other things that were more interesting than studying.”
[02:46]

His academic pursuit led him to the University of Michigan for a master’s in Chinese politics, where he discovered the profound impact education can have on societal transformation:

“What happened in China is that Mao and the Communist Party tried to change the culture of a nation largely by educating the kids. I was fascinated by how to reshape a society through education.”
[03:55]

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3. Transitioning to Education and Founding the University

Shai explains his shift from academia to entrepreneurship within the education sector:

“I became involved with a test prep company and later the CEO. We expanded into online education through partnerships, becoming the first white-label online university in Europe with the University of Liverpool.”
[06:52]

Despite early challenges in the burgeoning online education space, Shai recognized the immense potential of accessible education:

“There is a tool to educate people wherever they are. Online learning can be an amazing tool, even though most people couldn't afford it initially.”
[08:41]

---

4. Establishing University of the People

The pivotal moment came when Shai decided to create a tuition-free university dedicated to those with no other educational alternatives:

“University of the People is for the people who have no other alternatives. We are tuition-free. We have more refugees than any university in the world.”
[05:54]

He launched the university rapidly, leveraging volunteer expertise and open-source technology:

“We announced the university in Munich, and the next day the New York Times featured it. By September, we started teaching with courses built by volunteers.”
[15:03]

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5. Overcoming Accreditation Challenges

Securing accreditation was a significant milestone for legitimacy and credibility:

“We received our initial accreditation in 2014 by the Distance Education Accreditation Commission. Recently, we achieved WASC regional accreditation, aligning us with top U.S. universities like Stanford and UCLA.”
[16:55]

This accreditation ensures that University of the People meets rigorous educational standards, enhancing its reputation and acceptance globally.

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6. Empowering Refugees and Underserved Students

Shai highlights the university’s mission to serve those most in need:

“We have 19,000 refugees and 4,300 Afghan women studying with us because they are not allowed to study under Taliban rule. Our students come from 209 countries, including Gaza, where universities are closed due to conflict.”
[20:32]

Specific initiatives include developing programs in Arabic for Syrian refugees and planning similar programs for Venezuelan refugees:

“We developed a program in Arabic for Syrian students and are expanding to Spanish for Venezuelan refugees, aiming to open gates for millions more.”
[22:40]

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7. Sustainability and Funding Strategies

Maintaining financial sustainability while offering free education remains a challenge:

“We operate on a model where students pay $140 per course assessment, totaling $5,600 for a full bachelor’s degree. Over half of our students receive scholarships, allowing us to serve those who cannot afford any fees.”
[24:14]

Shai emphasizes the importance of donations for expanding scholarships and new programs:

“We need donations to support more students and develop new programs. Although we became financially sustainable for operations, donations are crucial for growth.”
[25:05]

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8. Leadership and Organizational Insights

Shai shares his leadership philosophy, emphasizing resilience and adaptability:

“Never give up. Be ready to make mistakes, learn from them, and pivot when necessary. For example, shifting from a B2B model to a private market approach was crucial for our success.”
[35:50]

He also discusses handling stress and maintaining high expectations while fostering a supportive team environment:

“I take the stress on myself and push my team to excel, while also accepting and learning from mistakes together.”
[39:40]

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9. Success Stories and Testimonials

Shai recounts impactful stories of students whose lives have been transformed through education:

“A young woman became a manager at Amazon after earning her MBA with us, owning her home and achieving the American dream. Another student from a poor neighborhood secured a job with IBM while studying computer science.”
[41:55]

These testimonials underscore the tangible benefits of accessible education in changing lives and communities.

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10. Future Plans and Vision for Global Education

Looking ahead, Shai envisions expanding the university’s reach, particularly in Africa, to address the vast demand for higher education:

“In Africa, countries like Nigeria graduate millions from high school annually, but only half can access university seats. Online education can bridge this gap, similar to how cell phones replaced landlines.”
[28:12]

Collaborations with governments and international companies aim to tailor education to local needs, fostering employment and economic growth.

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11. Advice to Aspiring Changemakers

Shai offers valuable advice for those looking to initiate impactful projects:

1. Understand the Subject Matter:
   “You shouldn’t start any project if you don’t understand the subject matter or lack expert support.”
   [35:50]

2. Detailed Planning:
   “Know the process, stages, and financial requirements before launching.”
   [35:50]

3. Expert Collaboration:
   “Have experts in every aspect, from finance to marketing, to guide and support your vision.”
   [35:50]

4. Embrace Feedback and Adaptability:
   “Test your product early, seek continuous feedback, and be willing to pivot when necessary.”
   [35:50]

5. Persistence:
   “Never give up. Resilience and unwavering belief in your mission are crucial.”
   [35:50]

---

12. Conclusion

Ilana and the co-host conclude the episode by celebrating Shai Reshef’s extraordinary contributions to global education. They encourage listeners to support University of the People by spreading the word or contributing to its mission.

“Shai, thank you so much for everything you’re doing. Your mission is truly making the world a better place.”
[46:57]

Shai expresses gratitude and reiterates the ongoing mission to extend educational opportunities further:

“We are just at the beginning. I hope to continue expanding our impact and enabling more students worldwide.”
[46:08]

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Key Takeaways:

• Innovative Education Model: University of the People leverages online learning, open-source technology, and volunteer expertise to provide accredited, tuition-free education.

• Focus on Underserved Populations: The university prioritizes refugees and individuals from marginalized communities, offering programs in multiple languages to accommodate diverse needs.

• Sustainability Through Hybrid Funding: While maintaining financial sustainability through minimal fees, the university relies on donations to expand scholarships and develop new initiatives.

• Leadership and Resilience: Shai Reshef embodies a resilient leadership style, emphasizing persistence, adaptability, and the importance of a strong, supportive team.

• Global Impact and Future Vision: The ongoing mission includes expanding into regions like Africa, addressing educational disparities, and fostering economic development through accessible education.

---

This episode serves as a compelling testament to the power of education in transforming lives and societies. Shai Reshef’s journey and the success of University of the People offer valuable insights for aspiring leaders and changemakers aiming to make a meaningful impact.

Transcript

[Ilana Gulan]

Wow, this show is going to be incredible. So buckle up and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it. But before we get started, I want to ask you for a favor. See, it's really, really important for me to help millions of people elevate their career, fast track to leadership land, dream roles, jump to entrepreneurship or create portfolio careers. And this podcast is all about enabling this for millions of people to see a map of what it actually takes for big leaders to reach success. So subscribe and download so you never miss it. Plus, it really, really helps me continue to bring amazing guests. Okay, so let's dive in.

[Shai Reshef]

When you educate one person, you can change your life. But if you educate many, you can change the world.

[Co-host]

Shai Resef, the founder of University of the People. He created the first tuition free accredited online university. He has provided access to higher learning for for over 153,000 students worldwide.

[Shai Reshef]

I read a UNESCO statement that in 2025 there will be 100 million students without universities to serve them. So I felt that it's my turn to give back. University of the People is for the people who have no other alternatives. We are tuition free. We have more refugees than any university in the world. We have 19,000 refugees. We have 4,300 afghan at home studying with us because they are not allowed to study under the Taliban rule. These are the people that we started a university for. The two hardest thing for me is, first of all.

[Co-host]

Shai Reserve today is going to be one of the more inspiring stories, stories you heard on this podcast. The founder of University of the People, they're transforming global education. He created the first tuition free listen to this accredited online university. He has provided access to higher Learning for over 153,000 students worldwide. Tuition free accredited. How many stories do we get that people are just that good? Shai, thank you for being on the show.

[Shai Reshef]

Thank you for inviting me.

[Co-host]

How does somebody grow up and eventually change the world and change education in this level? So tell us a little bit about you as a younger kid. What was it like? Were you entrepreneurial? Did you like education? Like, who are you?

[Shai Reshef]

It's interesting because I grew up in a modest family and I went to school. I was not the best school in class. I had other things that were more interesting than studying. I worked from very early age, kind of like, you know, supplement the study that I did the school wisdom work. But I think that after completing my bachelor degree, I went to Michigan to do my master level in Chinese politics in the University of Michigan. And there I became Exposed to through studying China on the importance of education. Because what happened in China is that Mao and the Communist Party tried to change the culture of a nation largely by educating the kids. And I was fascinated by, but before.

[Co-host]

That, why master's in Chinese politics? What would get somebody to decide? I'm not from China, but I'm fascinated by that specific topic.

[Shai Reshef]

I read about China and I learned about what happened in the last hundred few years from being amazing empire, how it collapsed because it was not ready for the developed world and was not ready to accept that they are inferior. And at the same time the Communist Party came and said, well, we are going to change it. And they created a mass movement, took over China and said, we are going to create a different country and a different culture and different nation. And I was really, how do you do that? And you know, we're not talking about a country of hundred thousand or a million people, right? This is the biggest country in the world. And I start following what's going on. And I was shocked. It took me to get into it to understand that it didn't really work all the way as they wanted. And when we see, we look at China today, it's clear that it didn't work. But also I realized that no doubt that China will become the largest and the strongest power on earth, which we are experiencing happening.

[Co-host]

We're seeing it, we're seeing it.

[Shai Reshef]

And I said, okay, not a lot of people know China. And I decided that I will be one of the few really known.

[Co-host]

Wow, Incredible. So right after that, instead of continuing in Chinese politics, you decide to go to education. So tell me a little bit about that path. Did people think you're crazy? How did that go?

[Shai Reshef]

So I studied Chinese politics and through my PhD studies, I also realized that while I love China, I'm not academics and I'm not going to be a professor and I'm not going to spend my life doing research, which I highly appreciate and I think it's extremely important, except that I don't think it is me. So I learned about test prep company, SAT test prep company and I became involved and I became the CEO of the company and it became international company with tens of programs in education, with hundreds of thousands of students. And among other things, we learned about actually University of Phoenix and other universities who started offering online education, which was really new. And we decided that we are going to do the same outside of the US and we were the first online university in Europe through partnership with the University of Liverpool. So we were the first university to have white. We were white labeling. University of Liverpool offering their online master degrees from Europe. We operated it from Amsterdam. And that's where I learned how powerful online learning can be.

[Ilana Gulan]

What year was that roughly?

[Shai Reshef]

Well, starting in 2000.

[Co-host]

Amazing. So right when everything is starting, you're already understanding the power of online, which is incredible because people were still trying to understand this Internet thing, and you already understand that this can actually be huge for education. So you work with Kit in Europe and build that. How did people adapt to that? Was it weird for people? Did they trust it? How was it?

[Shai Reshef]

The growth was very, very small for two reasons. First of all, it was for profit at the time. University of the People is nonprofit, but that was for profit. And it cost money. Significant amount of money. In the US People used to pay, always paid for higher education, not in the amount that they pay right now, but they still paid for higher education. Outside of the US People did not pay for higher education. So the concept of paying for higher education was no second, online was new. Look, even now we're talking about over 20 years from that. Still, people say, online learning is that good, Is that serious? Is it doable? Is it real? And then people look at us like, what is it? So we had a hard time. We had a hard time with that company. It was successful. For me, the major thing that I got out of it is to learn that there is a tool to educate people wherever they are. So we had students, let's say from Singapore, we operated from Amsterdam, but they stayed home, kept their job, stayed with their family, and still get University of Liverpool online degrees. So it was an amazing tool, except that I also realized that most people cannot afford it.

[Co-host]

I still want to go for a second because you led Kidum to transforming it to one of the largest private education companies. What are some of these challenges that you faced? I mean, some of it is definitely the money and the fact that it's cost. But what are some of the things that you face when you grow an education company to this level? And how did you overcome some of these?

[Shai Reshef]

I think it was true then and it is true now. When University of the People experiencing exponential growth, you never know what's next. So I think that I always spend my time trying to realize what is not going to work well, what should we keep fixing what might go wrong. And if it doesn't go wrong, we're lucky. If it goes wrong, you're ready for it. But yeah, but I think that growing, you know, it's everything from marketing to finance to operation to human resources, to culture, it's everything.

[Co-host]

And I assume you've taken all of this obviously to university of the people, but let me take you for a second to that idea of I gonna do something incredibly hard. Let me just create the same thing, but for free and accredited and for a lot of people. Like, tell me about that moment when you're deciding to do this and how the people around you react to that, because it does sound crazy shy. Let's be real.

[Shai Reshef]

So here it is. Kit was a great company. We decided to sell it to Laureate. Their name was not Laureate at the time. It was Sylvan Learning. Then they changed their name and I went to New York, semi retired, but very fast. I realized and my family realized that I'm not the retired. The retired person, yeah, I'm too hyper. And I felt that I want to continue, but it was also clear to me that I don't want to do more of the same. I sold two businesses. I felt that it's my turn to give back. And for me to give back was. And that's my personality. I want to do it in a way that will have an impact on the world. And having impact on the world is obviously education. Because when you think about it, when you educate one person, you can change your life. But if you educate many, you can change the world. So I start looking around and I wasn't sure how to do it and what exactly I want to do. But then through a friend, I met a company that wanted me to become involved. And I met them, two young, young kids. Not that young, but, you know, in their early 20s young. And I said, what do you do? And they said, you know, we have a website, obviously in education, where students come every day with their homework online, and professors come online and offer them help to help them with their homework. And they said, and what do the professors do? They said, well, they get nothing. They get karma points, which worth nothing. It's just a prestige. I said, listen, I know the world and I know education, and I understand a little bit psychology. If you help students with their homework, you're a tutor. If you're a tutor, why wouldn't you take money? I said, well, you don't understand the Internet. I said, okay, I'm willing to learn. And I came to their website and I realized that every time students come online, there are hundreds of professors who are willing to help them for free. What they get in return is karma points, which worth nothing. And I said, wait a second. By now, if you look at what makes Higher education, you need content. But there was already open educational resources, which mean content that professors put online for free. There is open source technology, free technology. And if there are professors that are willing to teach for free, actually this is what you need for a university. All I had to do is to put it together and create tuition free university. So that's where the idea came from.

[Co-host]

From that moment still to pull the trigger and say, let me try to do this crazy thing that will only rely on donors and volunteers and oh my God, Chai. Yes. How did you get there?

[Shai Reshef]

So I said, okay, there is open source technology, open educational resources and volunteers. I said, this is a university. All I have to do, as I said, is to put it together. So I went to a conference in Munich and I announced that I'm going to start a tuition free university. And by the way, I should have said that when I was in Kit, I realized that the main problem is that so many people need education but they can't afford it. And when I was thinking about creating University of the People, I realized, I read a UNESCO statement on that year in 2009, that in 2025, right now there will be 100 million students without universities to serve them. So I said, okay. I announced the university in Munich. The next day the New York Times wrote a page about it. And the following day I already had hundreds of emails from professors who said, wow, we want to help. And they built the university.

[Co-host]

So let's dive into that. Chai, it's amazing that you got already the press to see it and that really helps. And again, I can see why they would be drawn to something so beautiful. But tell us about the early days, because the early days still need capital to some extent. Even if a lot of people are volunteers, there's still operations and there's technology and there's infrastructure and there's marketing or travel. Like there's still things. So how do you start rolling this?

[Shai Reshef]

When I announced the university of the people, I knew what it takes to build a university because I had a university in Europe and I knew what it takes, which was a great plus because otherwise, what do you need in order to create university? Second, from the very beginning, I had amazing people who came to help, from our provost who came from Columbia University, and the vice provost from deans who came from NYU and Princeton. And those people taught me what I need in order to build a university. And they built it. So most of the manpower was volunteers, which saves millions of dollars along the years. We did need capital. I invested some Money originally, but we worked extremely fast because the idea was we are not going to become a regular university. We are going to give the students what they need in order to succeed, do it in the most efficient way that it can be done and the fastest way. So I announced the university on 27 January. By April we start enrolling students. By September we already started teaching. It was extremely fast. We built the courses while teaching. All were built by volunteers and technology. We use open source technology. So it was very, very fast and efficient. And luckily I had amazing people on my side who did it.

[Co-host]

So tell us a little bit also about getting it accredited because there's a different, like I'm sure it came with some skepticism and you know, I mean this is online. How can be accredited? What challenges did you run into in the beginning?

[Shai Reshef]

Well, the first time I met the accreditation agency, I felt like it's really easy because what they said, look, here are the standards. Just follow the standards and you can get accredited. Sure. Okay, sounds very easy. I remember going out, calling to my co CEO at KIT and saying, wow, you know how easy it is to get accredited. You're just following the standards. It was a long road. We received our initial accreditation in 2014 by the Deacon stands for distance Education Accreditation Commission, which is a national accreditation. A lot of the institutions are like ourselves for distance. And you need to meet a lot of standards because in order to get accredited, all your courses needs to be evaluated that they meet the standards. They need to see that you have all the procedures to accept the students, to serve the students and to verify that they meet the standards. Then they check the learning outcome. So it really checks every single element of your operation. It took us actually from 2010 or 11 when we started, until 2014 when we got initially accredited, which was huge thing for us. We had about 500 students when we had our initial accreditation. Now we have 153,000 ten years later. So it was a long road. While having the dac, which is a great accreditation, we get a lot of push from our students or requests from our students to get regional accreditation as well. Because in the US system there are national and there are regional and regional. They are older, they are more traditional and they are perceived by many as better accreditation. And you know, we're there not for ourselves, we're there for our students. And if the students want, we need to do it. One of the challenges that we had with our initial accreditation is that for example, Canada do not accept our accreditation for master level. So there was a need for another accreditation. So for the last five years we worked on another accreditation and two weeks ago we got it. Its WASC stands for Western Accreditation Secondary Commission, which is a regional accreditation. And now we have the same accreditation as Stanford and Berkeley and UCLA. You can't get any higher academic accreditation in the U.S. this is a major milestone for us that actually puts us in line with the best universities in the world, which is important because again, being online, well, I don't think that there is a single university in the U.S. they do not offer at least one course online. Still, people are not 100% sure that that's the right thing and the real thing. So you need legitimacy and you need credibility. And that's exactly what the accreditation gives us.

[Co-host]

And I want to talk a little bit about the impact of this because what it disenabled is ability to serve 150 plus students from what, 200 countries. And you know, including. I think you have incredible stories of helping refugees. And can you share a couple stories just so people understand the magnitude of this?

[Shai Reshef]

University of the people is for the people who have no other alternatives. We do not want to have the people who can get into Harvard or Stanford, Yale and others. We want to open the gates for those who have no other opportunities. By definition we have people in the US that are homeless, stay home mom immigrants. We have survivors of the genocide in Rwanda, the earthquake in Haiti, people who sell fruits on the streets. So we opening the gates to those who have, nobody else is willing to accept them. Among them, we have refugees. As a university, we have more refugees than any university in the world. We have 19,000 refugees. We have 4,300 Afghan women who are studying, hiding at home studying with us because they are not allowed to study under the Taliban rule. Moreover, what we just learned is that they start graduating. And 60% of our graduates in Afghanistan work remotely as programmers with international companies. It's amazing stories. And like these are the people that we started the university for. And we have in 2012 we start witnessing tens of thousands of Syrian knocking on our doors trying to study but could not make it because of the language. You know, the war in Syria and all the universities were closed. They were knocking on our door, they couldn't make it. So we said, okay, let's develop a program in Arabic. We develop a program in Arabic. Now we have 30,000 students studying in Arabic and many of them are refugees. So we are there for these people. And actually our next project is to develop your people in Spanish again for Venezuelan refugees because There are millions of them that do not have opportunities. And we can and we should open the gates to them. And that's what we do.

[Co-host]

Incredible. And I believe you also have people from Gaza. You have people from all over. When they can't go anywhere else, they come to you.

[Shai Reshef]

We have students from 209 countries. You write with students in Gaza. What we learned and we are a year and a half after when the war started in October, we had 17 students in Gaza. Nine of them are still studying even now. We had 11 professors from Gaza. The professors are volunteers, as you know, five of them are still teaching with us, which means that they are daily in the class. So we decided and we raised, we got scholarships for students from Gaza. And now we are enabling Gazean students to study with us again because all the universities are closed and we are their opportunity to continue their studies. That's our mission, to open the gates. I would say another thing, you know, we are tuition free. We are not free. We expect students to pay $140 per each end of course assessment. So a full BA would cost $5,600 for as long as it takes the students and we let the students actually up to 10 years to complete a bachelor degree. But they have to pay $140 by the end of each course. Those who cannot afford it, we offer them scholarships. So over half of the students pay nothing whatsoever in order to study with us. Because this is our mission, give them the chance. And that's what we do.

[Co-host]

This is absolutely amazing. And if somebody's watching me on YouTube, I'm like literally crying here. But tell me for a second, Chai, even to sponsor so many people, do you need to constantly go look for donations? Seriously, how do you run this operation? And what are some hard moments even for you? Like this mission can't stop, but donations sometimes are hard. What is it like for you?

[Shai Reshef]

The two hardest thing for me is first of all to spread the word. Because even though, you know, we have 150,000 students and our students are amazing ambassadors to our mission and they're really doing a lot online, most people who need us don't know that we exist. So how do you spread the word? And being tuition free means that we don't have a big budget.

[Co-host]

Marketing.

[Shai Reshef]

Budgeting. Yeah, marketing budget. But when they come to study and when they hear about us and they want to study, we need the money to make sure that we can take them. And this is a challenge. Both things will challenge from day one. And you know, we have 150,000 students. We are very proud of it, but the demand out there is way larger than that. But we can take all of them. You know, I'm very proud to have 4300 Afghan women studying with us, but we have over 20,000 applicants in Afghanistan and we simply cannot accommodate all of them. So, yes, I'm actually from day one raising donations to enable us. We are from almost after very few years we became financially sustainable, the operation. So we don't need donations in order to operate, but we do need the donations in order to get more students. So it goes for scholarships or for new programs, etc. And from day one, I'm raising the money. Coming from the for profit world, I did not understand what fundraising is and actually how hard it is. And when I started the university, I said, man, it's such an amazing idea. The money will flow in, obviously. I mean, we will never have any problem raising money. Well, it took me some time to realize that it doesn't really work this way and raising money is a profession and knowing how to build a philanthropic community is hard. So we're doing it and I do it large part of my time and we have now a great team that is working on it. But it is true that we are not doing as well as we should and we don't raise as much as we should because I mentioned scholarships. But if we had enough money, we can turn half of the university to operate with AI. And if we operate with AI, we can serve even more students. But again, you need money for that and so, yeah, there are challenges out there.

[Ilana Gulan]

Well, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends. This really helps us continue to bring amazing guests. Also, if you are feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30 minute training. I know it's going to help. It's leapacademy.com training. That's leapacademy.com Training. And I will see you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Ilana Galancho.

[Co-host]

I see a lot of beautiful people in Leap Academy that have all these brilliant ideas, but pulling it and making this happen, definitely the magnitude that you did. But even just launching it, being able to get the first donations, that's not easy. And sustaining it, there is, you know, a donation fatigue and people donate to a thousand things, so that's not easy to maintain. First of all, how did you become sustainable? Because I think that's key.

[Shai Reshef]

We need help spreading the word. As I said, in any Way that anyone can help us either spread because they have a lot of followers, or they know others, or they know organization that can partner with us. All of it is more than welcome. Moreover, we are also working on a project in Africa. The challenge in Africa is that in every single country in Africa there aren't enough seats in the universities to accommodate the demand. So take Nigeria, it's the largest country, but still 10 and a half million students graduate high school every year. A million and a half out of them take and pass the university entrance exams, which means qualified for higher education. But there are seats available for half a million. So by definition a million qualified students will stay up. And what we saying use our model. Because in online you can take any number of students and there is no shortage of seats. So we are looking for a government in Africa to work together with us to solve the shortage of our face seats and to show the other countries that solution is there. And to be like the cell phone did to the landline. Instead of having more and more lines, they just jumped to cell phones. And the same with universities. Instead of building more and more and more physical universities, go online and you can serve everyone. So our project right now we identify seven countries where they are relatively politically stable and have strong international companies presence. And we want the companies to team up with us. And the idea is to work with the government and with the companies to identify what education the companies need in order to hire local people. We are going to offer this education to educate the people. And together we are going to educate the people, offer them job and show how we educate many people. So if your companies operate in Africa and if you want to do good to Africa and to yourself there, because you will hire people, we are more than open to talk to you and obviously anyone who wants to help us sponsor any type of students that need help. Sure, come along. Your other question was about sustainability and about how you continue doing it, even though it's getting hard sometimes, etc. I believe from day one that any NGO should be sustainable from its, try to be sustainable from its revenues rather than from donations. Because if you depend on donations one day and you are gone. I mean, look at what happened right now. Trump cutting a lot of and quite a few NGOs will close down. Well, I felt that we should charge minimum from the students, from those who can pay and this amount should enable us operate be sustainable operationally. Which means that if we don't get donations, maybe we won't be able to serve as many students, but we will Continue working. Now your third question was about how do you continue doing it? And the answer there is actually I think it's partially personality. I never give up. I'm like, you know, the energizer bunny. But more than that I guess that it's the belief in the mission and the belief that if you will continue doing it will eventually work. And it does.

[Co-host]

It's amazing that you don't let that fear take you down. But let me ask you also a different question and one of the things that we noticed in Leap Academy and again we can't compare this, this is very much a for profit, it's for a different set of education, et cetera. But what we notice a little bit is that when people don't pay, they don't pay attention. So there's a lot of self help book, there's YouTube chann, there's a lot of free education that people won't do anything and then once they pay, suddenly their back is against the wall and it fuels them. It could be that it's just a different set of audience that just doesn't have as much starvation to content. But I would love to. Did you ever feel like that? Actually because it's free, they're not as committed. Do you see any of that?

[Shai Reshef]

It's yes and no. And I explain first of all, if you compare our degree students, refugees are. Those refugees are all free, totally free. They do better than the other students. So the fact that they don't pay does not mean that they are not serious. However, that's after they became degree seeking when we started and we evolved a long time. At the beginning we let everyone in and we didn't even ask them for their English which was really stupid because if you can't speak English you can't study without. But so we evolve and we put bars and we put. Actually but one of the things that we did, we introduced two foundation courses. So when you come to us, as long as you speak English and you have a high school diploma, you're welcome to start. And when you start with us, we ask you to take two courses. It's two academic courses. One course is Online Strategies which teach you how you study online, how to write an essay, etc. The second one is the field of your choice and we only teach Business administration, Computer science and Health science undergraduate as well as MBA Master in Education and Master in IT MA level. So you come to us and we say take two courses, see if you like it, see if you have the motivation, see if you like our pedagogy. If you have the discipline, if you have all this continue, show us that you meet our standards, you pass the courses, you get credit for them and continue with us. You don't pass the courses, sorry, you can't continue with us. But we lose over half of the students in these two courses for the very reason that you mentioned. Because a lot of students say, oh, it's tuition free, I'll come in and get the degree by mail. Or we tell the students, every single course that you take requires 20 hours a week. And the human nature is to say, well, 20 hours for a week is for him. I can do it in an hour a week. Well, one hour goes by and you're gone. You can't do it in one hour a week. And then, you know, it's the discipline of spending every night. You're sitting in front of the computer and you are by yourself. It's not that you sit with your.

[Co-host]

Peers, nobody's bossing you, so it's really hard.

[Shai Reshef]

So a lot of people simply cannot make it. So it's a screening that only the serious students come after they come and after they pass with amazing results and they continue and graduate.

[Co-host]

But yeah, so we have a lot of the listeners, again, they're like thinking, oh my God, like, I have huge plans that I want to change either within the company that I'm in, or I want to create some big change and I want to do something with meaning and I want to do something that matters. What are some of the tips that you give somebody like this to say, what is it? And how do I actually lift it off the ground? What are some of the skills? What are some of the mindset that you needed to develop to continue?

[Shai Reshef]

I think that you shouldn't start any project if you, you don't understand the subject matter or you have someone who understands it. Because if you want to produce a new car and you have no idea what it means to produce a car, most likely you're going to fail unless you have people around you that will help you. So this is one very important thing. Second, you need pretty much to know the process and plan for it, what it takes, what are the stages, how much money you need in order to do it. So you need to know all the details before you launch it. I think that you must have experts on your side unless you know it. Experts on your side in every aspect. I'm not a financial person, I will never be one. But I always had great financial people next to me to tell Me don't do that. You don't have the money to do it or you need to do it this way or the other way. You need to think about what other parts you need that you don't have, such as marketing. Do you know how to market? And you need to know how much it will cost you to market because otherwise it won't work. So I think that it takes a lot of learning before you go into it. Then you need to try to test your product as soon as you can get feedback all the time. Get feedback, what you do. You know, when we started, when we started the university, we thought that we are going to develop our learning management system by ourselves. Even though I had a university and we never developed it by ourselves. You bought one, you rent one actually. And it took me a few months that a friend of mine who is actually understand much more than I am in technology and in universities, technology said, you're crazy. You will never be able to make it this way because it's so costly. You know, that's not your business, it's.

[Co-host]

Not your main thing.

[Shai Reshef]

Yeah. So to understand what you do and what you buy and what you rent and what are you focusing on. And last but not least and probably the most important thing is never giving up. I think that you should be ready to make mistakes. You can't succeed without making mistakes. But accept them and learn from them and change. I'll give you an example that actually with KT the concept of kit was B2B that we are going to test centers and convince them. Tech test centers, when you want certification, etc. You go and take the exams and to convince the people who's coming there to get academic degree. Which sounds great, except the people who sell this product sell days in the center. They don't sell degrees. And this is a different product which they did not know how to sell and they were not interested. So it was a totally failure. So pretty much the entire concept of that university collapsed. And then we said, okay, but there is another market, the private market. Let's go for the private market. And we switch 180% degrees the way we operate and we went to a different market and it works. So be open, see if it doesn't. Is there another way?

[Co-host]

And how you as a leader shy, don't take that stress, if you will, from financial stress or pivot need, et cetera. How do you not take it down on your team? Or how do you balance between involving the team and being all alone on everything? How do you balance that well, first.

[Shai Reshef]

Of all, I take the stress on myself, not necessarily on my team, so. And I like being under stress. I have to do it. I like the tension. I don't think that I'm the easiest person to work with. I want everything to be done yesterday. I'm really, really pushing hard and always deadlines and always, okay, why do you think it will take you a month? Why can't you do it in a week? You know, And I'm always pushing people to the limit, which I think makes it hard to work with me. On the other hand, I think that people appreciate, first of all, I don't do it for the sake of making their life miserable. There is a reason for that. And second, I'm the first person to accept mistakes. I'll give you an example from again, history. We had marketing, VP marketing when we were three people. One of them was already VP marketing because I strong believer in marketing. And he was a kid like myself. And one day I see a truck coming to our office and download doggy bags. Just look, bags, thousands of them. And I said, did you order that?

[Co-host]

He said, yeah.

[Shai Reshef]

He said, why? We're a test prep company. And he didn't know why. I still don't remember. Probably he said something, but it wasn't good enough for me to remember what he said. But I said, you know, he's an amazing VP marketing and he's doing amazing things and he made a mistake. That's okay. We all, we are human being and you accept the mistakes. And I think that people appreciate it. So it goes both ways.

[Co-host]

Yeah, I think we're both. We want everything yesterday, so. And I don't know if that's something that you can talk about. Are there any special folks that were kind of more, I would say, famous or people that our audience might recognize our name that actually finished the University of the People? Or is that something that you don't reveal?

[Shai Reshef]

I won't say names because I wouldn't give any name without their permission. But I'll tell you a few stories.

[Co-host]

Sure.

[Shai Reshef]

Well, it's a story of a young woman that at the age of 14, became homeless. At the age of 16, she was homeless with a kid. Single mom with a kid at the age of 18, single mom, homeless with two kids. And she said, my only way to get out of it is through education. So she went to a college, graduated after four years with tens of thousands of debt and couldn't find a job. And she said, I'm not giving up. I'm going to master degree. And she came to us and she did her mba. And when I met her, she said, I'm now a manager at Amazon. I have my own home, I have my own pool, I have my vintage car. I'm the American dream and it's all because of you people. So this is one story, another story, which is actually, you know, it goes to a different direction, but it's very important. I met one of our students who started studying also. He grew up family who came from Mexico, and he grew up in a poor neighborhood and he couldn't afford going to college until he found us, started studying computer science with us, and after nine months got a job with IBM while studying with us. And again, you know, these are people that we help even if they don't complete the degree. So we have hundreds of thousands of stories like this. We have graduate work with Amazon and Google and IBM and Microsoft and JP Morgan and World Bank. Most of our students actually work while studying with us. The population, a lot of them are working adults, but 70% of them say that they got promotion while studying with us. So we are really giving them a better future. And it is important when you help someone to get a better job and a better future, you don't help others, their families, their communities. And if it's a lot of them, it's their countries, and if many of them, it's the world.

[Ilana Gulan]

I love that.

[Co-host]

And this is part of something that we share. Like, for me, the biggest moments. And I love that you shared the stories because I think at the end of the day, the biggest moments for me is that email, you changed my life, or that post on LinkedIn. Like, I wouldn't be here without Milana or Leap Academy or the coaches or. And I think this is what keeps you going because, you know, it's still going to be a roller coaster, but it's that conviction and that belief in the mission that actually keeps you getting up back in the morning and, you know, plowing through.

[Shai Reshef]

Exactly.

[Co-host]

No, I love these stories. Jai, what would be an advice that you would tell your younger self maybe based on everything that you've seen? Is there something that you would wish you knew earlier on?

[Shai Reshef]

It's interesting because I think that if I've started nonprofit earlier, I could have done more. However, the fact that I came there when I can afford doing that and I'm not depending on a salary or anyone to let me do that, is a great benefit. So from that perspective, you know, I. I feel that maybe I could have done more. But on the other hand, I'm very happy that I started it where where I started. I feel that the world should appreciate philanthropy in general more. I hope the world would have been more philanthropic. I think that I would love more people to go into NGOs because the world needs NGO. I think that I myself, I wish that I would be able to contribute to the realization how online is powerful so more people will take the opportunity for their own benefit, obviously. But I'm very happy with where I am and I would just wish to continue doing what I do. So.

[Co-host]

Of course. And it sounds like you guys are just scratching the surface, like you just got even better accredited now. And now let's go like the sky's the limit.

[Shai Reshef]

Yeah. We are just at the beginning. That's true. I hope.

[Co-host]

Amazing, incredibly inspiring. Shai, thank you so much for, first of all, everything that you're doing, but also for coming and sharing it with us and just incredible to watch projects like this. And hey, if you heard this, if this makes you excited, go spread the word. That's the least we can do. And also if you can contribute, if you have an organization that can contribute, let's hope. I think this is just such a beautiful mission and you're moving the needle on so many people that it literally makes the world a better place. So it's not about what we make, it's what we make possible and what you're making possible. Shai, is out of this world and all of us listeners can contribute.

[Shai Reshef]

Thank you for inviting me. It was a great conversation and thanks for doing it.

[Co-host]

Of course. Thank you.

[Ilana Gulan]

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. If you did, please share it with friends now. Also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch.

[Co-host]

This 30 minute free [e-mail] training.

[Ilana Gulan]

That's leapacademy.com training.

[Co-host]

See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Elana Gulan Show.