Amira Yahyaoui

"We wake up every day to challenge the unwritten rule that money equals opportunity. Instead, we believe that hard work and passion should be the only two things you need to fulfill your dreams."

"I decided to focus on education first not only because I couldn’t get a college degree but also because the US’s higher-education system is so prohibitively expensive that it prevents students from reaching their full potential."

"My experience in building an NGO taught me that I thrive when I use my time and brainpower to help others. I started to think about the number of obstacles that prevent young people from accessing opportunities and realized that the root of many of these obstacles comes down to a lack of education, especially higher education."

"I work super hard. For me, what's hard is not the time, money, or sacrifice, but how mentally draining it all can be. Starting a company, your brain is constantly obsessed with something and you feel like you’re constantly failing—every single day—but somehow, you find the drive to keep moving forward."

"It is addicting. You have to think of yourself as a constant builder. As soon as you solve one problem, you can’t help but move on to the next, regardless of the obstacles in your way. You just can’t stop. It’s a compulsion, and the harder it is to move forward, the more consuming it all becomes. Weird, right? But giving up is never part of the equation. Otherwise, you may as well be working at Facebook."

"Our community of students got hit hard by COVID-19. Many of our students are now back home, some are homeless, and a lot have parents who lost their jobs. So, we decided to shift the roadmap and have been working incredibly hard to support our students during this difficult period."

"Take off this idea that liberty and security can’t work together, and think that liberty and security are essential to each other."

"I try to understand why someone can be against something as beautiful as freedom of expression or gender equality."