The numbers don’t quite add up: women make up about 30% of EdTech founders worldwide but receive only a fraction of global venture capital, pulling in under 4%, according to GESAwards.
Despite the funding drought, female entrepreneurs are laying the technical foundations for how the world will learn, study and train as AI transforms every level of education.
From K-12 learning tools in Nigeria to AI sign-language teaching in Peru and AI skills coaching in the US, this year’s list covers more than just online courses.
The Numbers Behind EdTech’s Leadership
Even though EdTech is one of the stronger categories for female entrepreneurs, the financial divide remains hard to ignore.
According to FF Venture Capital, startups with at least one female founder account for 34.7% of the market but secure only 21.5% of total investment. To make matters worse, all-male teams bring in 2.1 times more cash than mixed teams and 3.7 times more than all-women teams.
This imbalance echoes through to the top. CoSN tracking indicates that women holding EdTech leadership roles across US school districts dropped to 29% in 2025, down from 37% previously, while female CTOs make up just 8.6% of the tech space.
Yet there are bright spots. EdTech still fares better than most other verticals, a trend reflected in the Aurora Tech Award’s 2026 Top 100 list featuring 18 women-led EdTech ventures in emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The Top 10 Women In EdTech To Watch In 2026
Here’s a list of the top 10 women in EdTech to watch in 2026, each building the tools that will shape how the next generation learns and works.
1. Adanma Ugwu, Founder, HiPrep
HiPrep connects African families abroad with qualified teachers back home for live, weekly tutoring, giving diaspora children consistent access to quality learning from teachers who understand their curriculum and context.
The platform is backed by the Mastercard Foundation, was named among Aurora’s 2026 Top 100 women-led startups in emerging markets, and won the 2025 Supernova Disruptor Award at GITEX Nigeria. Out of more than 1,000 startups, HiPrep was selected as one of the top 12 for Cohort 3 of the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship run with CcHUB.
Ugwu is also a mathematics teacher with more than a decade in the classroom, and is now integrating Lumi, HiPrep’s AI learning companion, alongside a pool of more than 250 expert tutors.
2. Anais Cisneros, Founder And CEO, Amela
Cisneros founded Amela as a passion project in June 2021 before going full-time as Founder and CEO in May 2023.
The platform now leads Latin America’s largest private network of women entrepreneurs in tech, and is expanding into Europe from its base spanning Berlin and Mexico City. She holds an INSEAD MBA and previously worked at EWOR in Berlin, Rally Cap VC in San Francisco and Samos Investments in London.
3. Federica Morici, Founder And CEO, Estudiantes Digitales
Morici leads what’s described as Latin America’s largest university learning community, built around her own Aurora Method, which combines AI, neuroscience, creativity and multisensory learning.
The approach has reached more than 37,000 students across 14 countries and was recognised by the World Internet Conference in China in 2025. Morici is also a lawyer, and founded her own firm, Morici & Asociados, in January 2026. She is a recipient of the IBA Young Lawyers’ Scholarship.
4. Priya Lakhani OBE, Founder And CEO, Century Tech
Lakhani’s AI-driven platform maps individual learning gaps and prescribes micro-lessons accordingly, and is already used across thousands of UK schools.
Century Tech is one of the better-known names in this sector, but is still under-profiled given its size. Founded in 2013, Century Tech now operates in more than 60 countries.
Lakhani, a former barrister, also co-founded the Institute for Ethical AI in Education and has served on the UK Government’s AI Council.
5. Haastrup Adejoke, Software Engineer, Kidsthatcode
As a developer relations and software engineer at Kidsthatcode, Adejoke builds platforms for youth across Africa.
Through coding classes, mentorship and hackathons, she helps equip children and teenagers with the digital skills needed to shape tomorrow’s tech space.
6. Cristina Mancini, Founder And CEO, Beyond Code Collective
Mancini founded Beyond Code Collective in March 2026 while also serving as CEO of Black Girls Code, a role she has held since October 2023.
Beyond Code Collective focuses on AI literacy, tech skills and workforce pathways for underrepresented learners, connecting classroom learning to future job prospects.
Before moving into the nonprofit world, she spent years at Salesforce, where she was Chief Engagement Officer and SVP of Salesforce Studios. Earlier in her career she led franchise development at 20th Century Fox, overseeing a portfolio worth more than $10 billion that included The Simpsons, Glee and Ice Age.
7. Lisa Lee-Prioly, Founder, UpLevel AI
Lee-Prioly founded UpLevel AI in February 2026, describing it as a personal trainer for AI skills.
The platform is still early-stage, helping knowledge workers identify gaps in their own capability and build real, hands-on proficiency with AI tools.
8. Kathryn Parsons MBE, Founder, Decoded
Parsons founded Decoded and built it into a global technology education company that’s educated almost a million people and worked with the leadership teams of more than 150 Fortune 500 companies on AI adoption and workforce capability.
She campaigned successfully for coding and computational thinking to join the UK national curriculum, received an MBE for services to education and was made an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge in 2026.
Today she is an investor and company builder, championing AI and deep tech founders and co-chairing GBx Global, a network of British founders and investors in the San Francisco Bay Area.
9. Giannina Honorio Heredia, Founder And CEO, IncluEdu
Honorio Heredia is a Peruvian engineer and neuroscientist whose AI-powered platform, IncluEdu, has taught sign language to over 10,000 people worldwide, lowering communication barriers for deaf users.
She also chairs Yapaykuy, which digitises services for people with disabilities, and Tinnitus Peru, which supports elderly hearing loss, and has been named among Forbes’ 50 Most Powerful Women in Peru and MIT Innovators Under 35 Latin America.
10. Irene Klemm, Co-Founder, Edurino
Klemm co-founded Edurino with Franziska Meyer in 2020 after both left Boston Consulting Group.
The Munich-based platform pairs a learning app with an ergonomic stylus and physical figurines, guiding children aged three to eight through school-readiness and digital skills. Edurino has raised a €17 million Series B, operates across the DACH region and the UK, and Klemm was named Gründerin des Jahres (Founder of the Year) 2025 at the German Startup Awards.
Edurino says it now reaches more than 500,000 families, and Klemm and Meyer were named finalists for EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026.
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