Client story Guiding “Stranded Superstars” in 3 Continents: The Steele Family Foundation’s Journey to World Impact

At every corner of the globe, there are countless superstar students, with many facing barriers to success, from financial constraints to limited access to educational resources. The Steele Family Foundation set out to bridge that gap for good — and the WISE Scholarship Program™ was born in 2019.

The vision for WISE was simple but powerful: a first-of-its-kind scholarship program powered by an intuitive educational portal. Equipped with everything from academic to lifestyle and even future healthcare tools, the portal would give students vital data points into their strengths, academic milestones, and more. Proprietary AI would also guide users to a better career path, using an engaging user experience design to keep students excited and coming back.

The portal would use data analysis to track student progress with a multipronged point system that weighs academic achievement, extracurricular accomplishments, volunteer service, and other nonformal educational experiences. Upon graduation, the points earned convert to dollar amounts for college scholarships — a true “earn-to-learn” approach.

4 pillars of the earn-to-learn 100-point system over 4 years

1. Academic excellence (30 points): This pillar focuses on the students' performance in their formal education. Points are awarded based on grades, improvement over time, and completion of advanced coursework, encouraging continual academic achievement.
2. Extracurricular engagement (30 points): Recognizing the importance of a well-rounded education, this pillar rewards students for participating in sports, arts, clubs, and other extracurricular activities. It aims to promote personal growth and leadership skills outside the classroom.
3. Community contribution (30 points): This pillar values the impact students make in their communities through volunteer work and engagement in local projects. It highlights the importance of civic responsibility and social impact, rewarding students who contribute positively to society.
4. References and exit essays (10 points): The final component involves points awarded for reference letters and a comprehensive exit essay that assesses students' ability to reflect on their learning and articulate their experiences and achievements.

For the Steele Family Foundation, building out this scalable and intuitive system required unique technology expertise in the modern applications space.

Delivering on the mission

The Steele Family Foundation originally partnered with Insight on a previous engagement and turned to our teams to actualize their vision for WISE. Through iterative design and development processes, Insight guided the Steele Family Foundation through application envisioning, UX support, design, build, and implementation. Every step of the way, our teams ensured dedicated knowledge transfer to the foundation team so that they could understand and maintain the technology platform.

After a strong partnership with Insight driving early-stage success, the foundation has invested in an in-house team of IP developers to support ongoing design and AI development for a multilanguage platform — meeting an increased demand for customization and integrated healthcare content.

Career guidance is a crucial element of the WISE program. The Steele family believes nothing drives a student more than having a well-understood and targeted career path — one that helps them measure their own success while providing milestones to get them to their goals in life.

Using an Agile approach, Insight worked closely with key stakeholders from the Steele Family Foundation, including Stacey Steele, director of communications and operations. Throughout the first scope of work to build out the portal, the Steele Family Foundation worked with Insight’s teams spanning UX, development, product leadership, engineering, QA, and digital enablement.

The WISE program is set to impact schools in India soon, where ground-up construction has been funded over the past seven years by the Steele Family Foundation.

The outcome: Changed lives through education — and alliance-powered technology that can scale

Today, students that use the platform have access to the financial support, personalized guidance, and career analytics they need to unlock their full potential. What’s more, the system was built to expand, integrating with alliance organizations around the world that can contribute to the cause. In the future, any alliance organization can onboard into the platform with white labelling — a truly integrated framework that will continue impacting students around the globe.

A snapshot of such alliance organizations includes:

• The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award (reaching 120 countries worldwide)
• SOS Children’s Villages (reaching 130 countries & territories worldwide)
• JKL “just keep livin” Foundation (reaching 40+ inner city high schools/sites across 17 U.S. cities)
• Boys & Girls Club of greater Arizona/Scottsdale
• Grace Sober Living recovery programs using targeted education development as a key element to addiction recovery

The platform uses AI experience to assess students’ academics, personality, learning aptitude, and more to help users understand their strengths. Students can track their progress year over year, and when they finish school, get a comprehensive report with recommendations for ideal career paths.

By harnessing the power of data analytics and intuitive technology, the Steele Family Foundation continues to push the boundaries of what's possible and inspire the next generation of leaders.