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The son of Jewish refugees from Latvia and Ukraine, Michael Ioffe has been obsessed with education for as long as he can remember. At age 15 he founded TILE.org, one of the world's largest entrepreneurship education nonprofits. Through TILE.org's work in Yemen, where the civil war has forced schools to close, he got the idea to deliver short-form courses via text message. In 2019, he launched Boston-based Arist, a platform that now helps organizations ranging from GE to the state of California rapidly teach and train their employees via text message-based courses, which are remarkably accessible and effective.