Wendy Kopp

Company: Teach For AllTitle: Co-founder & CEOIndustry: Non-profitNotable in 2024: Kopp marked her 35th year connecting teachers to marginalized students. In 2024, 15,000 Teach For All teachers collectively reached 1.3 million students.

During her senior year at Princeton University in 1989, Wendy Kopp proposed a bold idea for addressing two major issues that had long created inequality in the education system in the U.S.: a shortage of teachers and dire academic issues seen in high-need urban and rural schools.

Kopp's idea — recruit high-performing college graduates to teach in those needy schools — blossomed into the nonprofit Teach For America, which has expanded educational opportunities for millions of marginalized students across the U.S. over the past 35 years.

In recent years, Kopp has brought that approach across the globe. In 2007, she launched Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations following those same principles, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Teach For All has expanded to include more than 62 countries, working everywhere from Afghanistan and Armenia to Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe. In 2024, 15,000 Teach For All teachers collectively reached 1.3 million students.

Kopp has continued on her journey to transform educational systems, engaging with leaders across Teach For All's network to create solutions that can improve the lives of all children.

"The young people in our classrooms today will be leading the world in 20 years," Kopp wrote in a Teach For All report last year. "If we develop them holistically, foster their agency and awareness of themselves and society, their sense of empathy and wellbeing, and their problem solving and critical thinking skills, then we'll have a meaningfully stronger world."