Aly Murray

Raised by a single mom who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba, Aly struggled to access academic support at school and in her home. She knows firsthand the obstacles facing low-income high school students in the United States. That’s why she founded UPchieve, an online tutoring and college counseling platform that aims to democratize education by providing free academic support to low-income students living in the United States.

As a lifelong community activist with over 9 years of professional tutoring experience, Aly began her college education at a community college. While there, she served as an AmeriCorps Scholar in Service to PA and was awarded the President’s Distinguished Service Award (1 of 1,233 graduates). She also worked as a Supplemental Instructor in Algebra and Statistics and as a professional online tutor at the college. In 2016, Aly graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

After graduating, Aly worked in trading at J.P. Morgan, but struggled to find volunteer opportunities that would fit in with her new professional schedule. She still wanted to be able to give back to low-income students, but realized there were no accessible tools for both students and volunteers.

With fees for private tutoring starting at over $20 an hour and easily reaching over $100 for SAT prep, Aly knew academic support had long been out of reach for the 8 million low-income high school students in the United States. Additionally, college admissions consulting can remain even further out of reach with an average cost of $5,000.

In addition, many students need tutoring late at night–UPchieve found that 85% of students have significant responsibilities outside of school and extracurriculars–and after school programs and private tutors have limited hours. Volunteer programs often require large chunks of availability, making tutoring difficult for busy professionals.

Aly knew she had to take the big step in creating an edtech platform that could help solve these problems, so she founded UPchieve.

Today, UPchieve has provided over 50,000 hours of tutoring and college counseling to high school students across the country, with meaningful results. In fact, a recent randomized controlled trial study found that students improved their scores on Star Math--a national math assessment--by approximately 9 percentile rank points after an average of 9 sessions.

Aly’s goal for UPchieve is to reach all low-income high school students in the US by 2030. Her work has been recognized by Forbes and TIME, and UPchieve’s funders include Y Combinator and the Gates Foundation.