Transcend
Aylon Samouha, CEO
Education

Transcend supports communities to create and spread extraordinary, equitable learning environments. They help communities start and sustain school design journeys that move them from inequitable, industrial-era learning to learning that is equitable and responsive to the opportunities of the 21st century.
Year Founded: 2015
Transcend pursues its mission in three ways:
- Directly supporting schools and systems in their design work
- Democratizing design support through resources, tools, and professional learning that enable communities everywhere to do this work
- Catalyzing systemic change by engaging funders, system leaders, and policy influencers to understand and advance innovation
For transformation to take place, the education sector required an investment in research & development (R&D), activities organizations undertake to innovate, solve new problems, and learn new things. Unfortunately, most school systems lacked capacity for this work. Transcend’s team was passionate about bringing this piece to the puzzle as an R&D engine for the education sector. Transcend launched with a focus on school partnerships, carefully identifying opportunities that allowed them to fuel breakthrough innovation in holistic school model design. Through the years, they continued to grow their number of direct partnerships while creating freely available design supports that communities across the country could use in their local efforts. Since 2015, they’ve partnered with nearly 450 schools and districts serving over 1.2M students (80%+ BIPOC) across 30+ states.

Aylon Samouha
CEO