Explore our story and mission

Dean Celaj, founder of GoTeacher, was born in 1997 in Vlorë, on Albania’s beautiful Mediterranean coast, as the country faced widespread unrest following the collapse of pyramid investment schemes.

Dean attended American-system schools in Tirana before moving to Oxford, United Kingdom, where he pursued the International Baccalaureate (IB). Wanting more students in Albania to have access to the opportunities he had received, he focused his early work on supporting the country’s public schools. He created Akademi.al, Albania’s equivalent of Khan Academy. Backed by UNICEF and adopted by the Albanian government as its official learning platform during COVID-19, it reached 91% of the country’s students.

In August 2022, Dean and Harvard Business School professor John J-H Kim founded GoTeacher at the Harvard Innovation Labs. The mission was simple: make educators’ lives easier with AI. Today, GoTeacher helps school leaders manage technology, protect student data, and spend more of their budgets on tools that support learning.