Last week, LearnLaunch hosted the annual Global Edtech Startup Awards (GESA) North American semifinals. GESA is the world’s largest Edtech startup competition, held in 17 countries, and identifies emerging edtech solutions all over the world. Winners get unique exposure to the global Edtech ecosystem, valuable PR, mentorship and business development opportunities.

With over 2,500 applicants, the semifinals are held throughout different regions of the world and companies who move to the next round get exclusive access to an edtech startup bootcamp with MindCET AND the opportunity to present at the finals during the BETT Show in London next January.

This year, we selected 6 companies to present: Beagle Learning, iSchoolConnect, ImBlaze, Sense Education, SiLAS and Thimble. The companies represent a broad range of solutions and verticals from K-12, to Higher Ed, and Workforce. Each presented for 5 minutes to an audience of edtech enthusiasts and were judged by edtech experts: Barbara Clarke, Liam Pisano, Moha Shah, and Steve Shapiro.

While each solution was unique, showed strong traction, and excited the judges, one stood out among the rest…

ImBlaze!

ImBlaze, developed by Big Picture Learning and represented by Co-Executive Director Andrew Frishman, convinced all 4 judges that the product addressed a critical issue in education and proved to have substantial, scalable traction.

ImBlaze focuses on putting students directly at the center of their own learning by helping students find potential internships under the schools’ guidance and compliance.

Due to the high number of applicants for the North American Semifinals, LearnLaunch will also host a virtual semifinal on November 20th for those applicants on the West Coast and Canada. Sign up here.