Soraya Fouladi

Soraya Fouladi is an international entrepreneur, leading a multi-national team to achieve Jara's goals of empowering children in under-resourced communities to receive a quality education anytime, anywhere. An electrical engineer by training, Soraya combined her robotics experience with her global education at the United Nations International School to bring a multifaceted approach to the start-up world that is based in improving the livelihoods of those in need through tangible products. Her invention, the Jara Unit, is a solar and crank-powered education device that provides children offline access to curriculum-aligned educational content. This innovative combination of hardware and software can mimic a workbook, personal tutor, a textbook, a quizzing tool, and more.

Soraya founded Jara after gaining experience in designing and implementing systems and programs through writing curriculum for K-12 robotics, directing the largest technology-education camp of 500 campers and 60 staff members at Stanford, creating a fundraiser for disaster relief called Jamming-for-Relief, and designing and implementing effective systems as Supervisor for an electrical engineering innovation laboratory. Soraya also was a business management consultant for a government technology commercialization organization that had 72 portfolio companies.

Soraya is a Cisco Global Problem Solver, Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus Fellow, United Nations Keynote Speaker, SOCAP Fellow, Skoll Delegate, Gratitude Network Fellow, and One Young World/Deloitte SDG4 Scholar Awardee.

Her strong leadership, management, engineering skills, paired with her commitment to Jara’s mission, ensures that Soraya and her phenomenal team will see Jara to its maximum impact.