A Letter from Heejae Lim, Founder & CEO of TalkingPoints
Dear friends,
Ten years ago, I founded TalkingPoints with a simple but deeply personal mission: to unlock the potential of families to fuel their children’s learning. I wanted to level the playing field for families facing barriers to engaging with their child’s school. We have utilized accessible technology, universal design principles, and research-based best practices—leveraging machine learning and AI to develop a platform that fosters meaningful family-school partnerships at scale, with the goal of enhancing student learning and well-being.
It’s been humbling to witness the growth from a grassroots effort serving a dozen students to becoming a trusted partner for over 9 million educators, students, and their families. And in this time, we have facilitated the exchange of over 1 billion conversations between families and schools — each a step toward deeper partnerships between families and educators.
As I reflect on our history, I’m full of gratitude for the progress we have made and the support we’ve received from philanthropy, the communities we serve, and champions of our mission. TalkingPoints would not be where we are without all of you! Throughout this journey, three things have shaped our work:
Community input and design
We have always centered the voices of our stakeholders. We designed our first prototype with teachers in Oakland, and we have listened to our users every step of the way. When we learned early on that families with varying literacy levels struggled to use TalkingPoints, we launched text-to-speech to ensure TalkingPoints was accessible to those families. When families did not understand the education acronyms and jargon that are commonly communicated from schools, we built an education glossary that explains the various terminology that gets used. And we have always provided best-in-class translation that optimizes for understandability of language, and including support for low-resource languages and dialects to serve those who are hardest to reach, evolving to support 150+ languages.
Research and evidence base
Everything we build stands on the shoulders of decades of family engagement research. And we are proud to have added to that evidence base with research showing adoption of TalkingPoints improves student outcomes like math, reading, attendance, and behavior. Perhaps more significantly, this causal link was even stronger for underserved student populations, validating that our universal design and accessibility principles are working to remove barriers to family-school partnerships. We have celebrated with many school district partners in their success to drive their priorities using family engagement as a strategic lever, as students gained 7+ months of additional math learning and watched absenteeism fall by 24%.
Innovation
We embraced the power of AI early to make meaningful connections and support possible at scale. For example, TalkingPoints was the first nonprofit to receive a GPT-3 license before ChatGPT was released. Our R&D arm, Solutions Incubator, is constantly experimenting and innovating to ensure we are leveraging the powerful new tools at our disposal. We have been able to work on things that were impossible to build when our journey began – like analyzing massive amounts of data in a very short time, creating personalized at-home learning activities and communications at scale, as well as coaching educators and schools in real-time on how best to engage with families while using the product.
As I look to the next ten years of TalkingPoints, I’m full of hope for what is possible when every child can reach their full potential with the support of their families, schools and communities.
With gratitude,
Heejae Lim
Founder & CEO
P.S. Philanthropic contributions are essential to this vision. Consider making a gift today!
Celebrating 10 years of partnership and impact
For a decade, TalkingPoints has supported students, families, and educators through the power of effective family-school partnerships. As an education technology nonprofit, our award-winning communication and family engagement platform has improved outcomes for districts and students across the country.
We connect 9 million+ educators, students, and family members annually and have facilitated more than one billion conversations—building trust, fostering relationships, and fueling student success. Named by Common Sense Education as “the best overall family communication platform for teachers and schools,” TalkingPoints drives measurable gains in attendance and academic achievement, backed by rigorous, causal research.
Join us in building a future where every child has the support they need to thrive.
