Education is being reimagined across Asia. A new generation of educators, entrepreneurs, and innovators helps learners navigate an increasingly complex world. Their initiatives span AI-powered learning platforms, youth leadership movements, workforce development, and experiential learning.
Technology continually reshapes industries, pushing employers to place a greater emphasis on adaptability and lifelong learning. Consequently, education is no longer confined to traditional classrooms. Today’s most influential voices create new pathways for skills development, educational access, leadership growth, and future-ready learning experiences. Ultimately, these opportunities extend far beyond formal institutions.
In this edition of Top 10 Voices Shaping Education Across Asia (2026), NewInAsia spotlights ten influential leaders. These individuals help transform how people learn, grow, and prepare for the future. Through their ideas, initiatives, and achievements, they continue to shape important conversations across the region. Their work specifically drives discussions around education, employability, innovation, and opportunity.
Highlights
Iman Usman
Co-Founder & COO of Ruangguru
Iman Usman is one of Asia’s most recognized education entrepreneurs. He achieved this through his work as Co-Founder and COO of Ruangguru. Today, many widely regard Ruangguru as Southeast Asia’s largest edtech company. Under his leadership, Ruangguru has grown to serve more than 23 million students and 300,000 teachers. The company successfully expanded its offerings across K-12 education and professional learning. Additionally, it now provides corporate training and skills development.
Beyond building a company backed by investors including General Atlantic, GGV Capital, East Ventures, UOB Venture Management, and Credit Suisse, Iman has earned international recognition for his contributions to education and youth empowerment. His accolades include the ASEAN Youth Award, Global Teen Leader Award, British Council Global Changemaker Award, UNICEF Young Innovator to Watch, Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year, and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Emerging Entrepreneur).
Furthermore, his work has been featured by CNN, BBC, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Euronews. Iman holds academic credentials from the University of Indonesia, Columbia University, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through his work, he continues to demonstrate a clear vision. He shows how technology and entrepreneurship can expand educational opportunities at scale.
Vijayalakshmi Karuppasamy
Founder & CEO @ FOX Ventures & FOX Academy Japan
Vijayalakshmi Karuppasamy is helping connect education, innovation, and entrepreneurship through her work with FOX Ventures and FOX Academy Japan. As a founder, she focuses deeply on future-oriented learning. She actively champions AI education, entrepreneurship, and cross-border talent development. Specifically, her work bridges the ecosystem between Japan and the wider Asian region.
Moreover, she engages deeply within the startup, technology, and learning communities. This active involvement positions her as a visible advocate. Ultimately, she works to prepare both learners and professionals for an AI-driven future. By emphasizing practical skills, innovation, and adaptability, she highlights the growing importance of continuous learning in a rapidly evolving economy.
Her work offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs, educators, and professionals seeking to understand how education can evolve alongside technological transformation.
Hamdi Tabbaa
Co-founder & CEO at Abwaab
Hamdi Tabbaa is reshaping digital education across the Middle East and North Africa through Abwaab, one of the region’s most prominent edtech platforms. As Co-founder and CEO, he has built a multi-product company now operating across six markets, helping students excel in high-stakes national exams through a blend of cohort-based learning and one-on-one tutoring.
Abwaab’s offering extends beyond exam prep — the company recently acquired Apex, expanding into university admissions support, and operates a dedicated product line serving ministries of education directly. Backed by investors including BECO Capital, 4DX Ventures, and GSV Ventures, Abwaab represents one of the more ambitious edtech bets in the MENA region.
For founders, investors, and educators, Hamdi’s work demonstrates how deep local insight and entrepreneurial conviction can combine to meaningfully expand access to quality education across underserved, high-potential markets.
Ts. Sreeman Mannamu
Group Chief Executive Officer, Garranto Group | Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Garranto Academy
Ts. Sreeman Mannamu has built his reputation around workforce development, lifelong learning, and future-ready education. He works closely with Garranto Academy and the broader Garranto Group ecosystem. Through these platforms, he actively advocates for upskilling and reskilling. He views both practices as essential drivers of professional growth and organizational success.
Furthermore, his work explores the relationship between education, technology, and employability. This research helps individuals and businesses navigate an increasingly dynamic labour market. His focus on practical learning and industry relevance reflects the growing demand for continuous education in the modern economy.
As industries evolve and new technologies emerge, his insights provide valuable guidance on preparing talent for future opportunities.
Ejaj Ahmad
Founder, Global Youth Leadership Center & Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center
Ejaj Ahmad has dedicated nearly two decades to developing young leaders and expanding opportunities through education. Most notably, he founded the Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC), which has grown into one of the country’s leading youth leadership organizations with more than 10,000 alumni now contributing across government, business, and civil society.
In 2022, he founded the Global Youth Leadership Center (GYLC) to mobilize climate leadership across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Through the organization, he has convened summits across three continents and spoken at the past five United Nations Climate Conferences.
His work has earned recognition as an Ashoka Fellow, Eisenhower Fellow, and recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School Rising Star Award. He also serves on the Eisenhower Fellowships Global Network Council and the Asia Society Global Council.
Through BYLC and GYLC, Ejaj continues to demonstrate how leadership development can equip young people to create meaningful impact in their communities and beyond.
Natalie Chan Verb
Founder & Principal, OWN Academy
Natalie Chan Verb is on a mission to build a new learning model for the 21st century — one built on a simple but radical premise: that education should be experiential, purposeful, and designed to transform employers into educators. Her vision is global adoption, and her conviction is that learning must finally be built around the individual, not the institution.
As Founder and CEO of OWN Academy, she has spent more than a decade developing and proving this model across Asia, reaching more than 20,000 young people across three critical stages of development. Learners aged 9–13 receive industry masterclasses that open their world to non-traditional careers. For those aged 14–17, scalable, project-based work experiences provide direct entry into real professional environments. Finally, young adults aged 18–28 access mentorship-driven learning designed to accelerate career development.
Holding a Master’s degree in Education, specializing in Designing Powerful Learning Environments, Natalie has dedicated her career to dismantling the one-size-fits-all model that still dominates global education and replacing it with something that connects young people directly to industries, employers, and entrepreneurs. At the heart of this model is a belief that every job, at its core, is about solving problems.
By bringing real professionals into the learning environment, OWN Academy helps young people learn to identify problems, understand how they are solved, and connect those insights to their own sense of purpose and direction.
Natalie’s work has earned recognition as a Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellow, a World Economic Forum Annual Meeting delegate representing Asian youth, an Ashoka Changemaker x Change Fellow, and a recipient of Prestige’s 40 Under 40 recognition. Yet the impact she is building toward is even greater.
In an era of rapid and relentless change, Natalie believes that future-proofing the next generation means giving young people something deeper than knowledge and skills — it means empowering them to find purpose through solving real problems. That sense of purpose, she argues, is the most durable form of resilience we can instill, and it is what every young person, anywhere in the world, deserves access to.
Haroon Yasin
CEO @ Taleemabad
Haroon Yasin is one of the region’s most impactful education entrepreneurs, working to expand learning access in underserved communities. As CEO of Taleemabad, he has helped build a platform that combines technology, localized content, and educational programming to reach learners at scale.
Notably, Taleemabad serves more than 1.5 million learners and reaches over 8.5 million viewers every week through educational television programming. These achievements demonstrate how innovation can help overcome barriers to educational access and improve learning outcomes.
Beyond technology, Haroon’s work reflects a commitment to making quality education more accessible to children and families who need it most.
Cecilia Calvo-Lewis
COO & Co-Founder @ EDGE Tutor
Cecilia Calvo-Lewis is helping redefine how education companies scale high-quality teaching across borders. As COO and Co-Founder of EDGE Tutor, she leads the operational backbone behind a global tutor delivery model that connects education companies with trained, qualified, and performance-managed tutors from the Philippines.
Under her leadership, EDGE Tutor supports education companies in more than 35 countries, helping them expand access to online learning while maintaining standards in teaching quality, teacher training, learner support, and service reliability. Her work bridges education, workforce development, and global operations — showing how distributed teaching talent can be built, supported, and scaled responsibly.
Cecilia’s contribution reflects the future of education delivery: more connected, more flexible, and more globally inclusive, with Filipino educators playing a meaningful role in supporting learners around the world.
Do Danh Nam
President & Founder, Nettop Learning
Do Danh Nam has spent more than a decade helping organizations modernize workplace learning through technology. As the President and Founder of Nettop Learning, he has built a learning technology and e-learning company that supports businesses, organizations, and universities through learning management systems, digital course development, and learning transformation initiatives.
Since founding Nettop Learning in 2013, Do Danh Nam has played an active role in advancing digital learning adoption in Vietnam. Through partnerships with globally recognized learning technology providers and extensive consulting work, he has helped organizations implement learning platforms, develop digital learning content, and improve the effectiveness of their training programs. Under his leadership, Nettop Learning has evolved from a distributor of learning technologies into a comprehensive e-learning solutions provider, serving both local and international organizations.
More recently, his work has focused on the practical application of artificial intelligence in learning and development. He actively explores how AI can support instructional design, learning analytics, personalized learning experiences, and AI-powered learning assistants. Through consulting, training programs, and thought leadership initiatives, he helps learning professionals and business leaders understand how AI can be integrated into learning systems in practical and meaningful ways.
A strong advocate of human-centered learning, Do Danh Nam believes that technology should enhance, not replace, human potential. His work emphasizes the importance of combining technological innovation with sound learning design principles to create learning experiences that are both effective and engaging.
For business leaders, educators, and learning professionals, Do Danh Nam offers valuable insights into how AI, digital learning, and instructional design can work together to shape the future of workforce development and lifelong learning. He continues to contribute to conversations about how organizations can prepare people for a rapidly changing future of work and learning.
John Tan
Chief Education Officer, ErudiFi
John Tan sits at the intersection of education access, entrepreneurship, and youth development. As Chief Education Officer at ErudiFi, he contributes to efforts that help students access educational opportunities through innovative financing solutions across Southeast Asia.
Beyond ErudiFi, he is also the founder of Saturday Kids, an initiative focused on helping young learners develop entrepreneurial, creative, and digital skills. Furthermore, he has been selected as an Obama Foundation Leader and remains actively involved in startup investing, community building, and youth-focused initiatives.
By combining education, entrepreneurship, and opportunity creation, John offers a distinctive perspective on how learning can empower future generations.
Beyond Classrooms: The Voices Shaping Education Across Asia
The future of education will not be defined by a single technology, institution, or learning model. Instead, future leaders will shape it. These innovators are willing to rethink how knowledge is delivered, accessed, and applied in a rapidly changing world.
The individuals featured in this edition of Voices Shaping Education Across Asia represent a diverse range of perspectives. Their focus spans educational equity, youth leadership, AI-enabled learning, workforce development, experiential education, and digital transformation. Although their approaches differ, these leaders share a common belief: education remains one of the most powerful tools to unlock human potential.
Asia continues to strengthen its position as a hub for innovation, entrepreneurship, and talent development. In this landscape, these voices will remain important catalysts for change. Through their leadership, ideas, and actions, they are helping shape a more inclusive, adaptable, and opportunity-rich future for learners across the region.
Highlights
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