[NEWS] Human rights activist Amira Yahyaoui is battling the US college financial aid system – Loganspace

Tunisian human rightsactivist Amira Yahyaoui couldn’t saunter to university.

Not because of she couldn’t comprise adequate cash it; where she comes from, college is when it comes to free. She misplaced the assorted to pursue elevated training, to comprise highschool, even, when she was exiled from Tunisia at age 17, below the repressive regime of the country’s gentle President, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

As fragment of the Tunisian human rights diaspora, she was inspired to perform Al Bawsala, a globally renowned NGO that fights for authorities accountability, transparency and derive true of entry to to data. Now, Yahyaoui has traveled hundreds of miles to San Francisco to wrestle one other battle come and dear to her heart: civic training, or in Silicon Valley phrases, edtech.

“I frequently knew that I wouldn’t enable myself to comprise the relaxation else earlier than solving the problem in my country and nowadays, Tunisia is the single Arab democracy within the sphere,” Yahyaoui urged TechCrunch.

With that in thoughts, her focal point has shifted toMos, a tech-enabled platform for college students to seem at for financial encourage. With backing from Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, his startup studio Expa, Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr, Defective Ventures, Candy Capital and others, Mos has closed a $4 million seed spherical and plans to capture its no longer too lengthy ago-launched product to the next stage.

The startup seeks to diminish American pupil debt, which totaled nearly$1.6 trillion in 2018, and digitize the antiquated authorities methods that deter college students from making consume of for financial encourage. For a one-time rate of $149 and about 20 minutes of their time, Mos helps college students of all backgrounds maximize their encourage awards.

“Our mission is to bridge the outlet between voters and authorities in a technique that works with technology nowadays,” Yahyaoui said.

Yahyaoui is making consume of what she’s realized constructing a authorities-combating NGO to the startup world, and with the fortify of top-tier investors, she’s effectively on her technique to proving an “uneducated” immigrant lady of color can write a Silicon Valley success anecdote for the a lot.

A face of the Arab Spring

After being pressured out of her home country, Yahyaoui fled to France, where she lived as an illegal immigrant and persevered to wrestle against Tunisia’s authoritarian leadership via her blog and an anti-censorship advertising and marketing campaign she started on-line.

When social media sparked anti-authorities protests all the very best possible contrivance via the Center East, Yahyaoui, aloof unable to reenter Tunisia, grow to be a face of what was later called the Arab Spring. Her digital prowess, activist recognition and persistent efforts to specialize within the Tunisian administration’s human rights abuses immediate made her a face of the motion.

On January 14, 2011, when the protests succeeded in making Tunisia a pioneer of Arab democracy and ended Ben Ali’s reign, Yahyaoi bought her passport encourage and went home, right away.

Back in Tunisia with newfound freedom, she had an agenda: To wait on the governing company charged with writing a brand fresh Tunisian constitution guilty.

Yahyaoui built Al Bawsala, translated as The Compass, an NGO targeted on transparency and authorities accountability. Al Bawsala grow to be regarded as one of the biggest NGOs within the Center East, a bona fide success that attracted a wide sequence of awards and cemented Yahyaoui’s build as a brave suggest for human rights, a freedom fighter and regarded as one of the influential Arab women within the sphere.

“I needed to work doubtlessly 10 events tougher to derive to be the self-trained me I am nowadays,” she said. “I saw contrivance too many folk getting their training refused and therefore their future ruined.”

Her world standing earned her a seat on the board of the United Nation’s High Commissioner For Refugees Advisory Community on Gender, Compelled Displacement, and Protection, as effectively because the title of Younger World Chief at the World Financial Discussion board and co-chair of the Davos Conference in 2016, a title she shard with Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and GM’sMary Barra.

Three years later, with a resume enviable to any dignitary, Yahyaoui is leveraging her irregular skills to trap in project capitalists and consume their cash for correct.

Repairing a broken financial encourage system

Mos is delight in if Turbo Tax married Typeform and had a diminutive bit one, Yahyaoui defined. Not dissimilar toFrequent App, Mos lets college students notice to bigger than 500 federal and explain-based totally mostly encourage programs in minutes the usage of a leer that fits them to each grant and scholarship program they qualify for, while concurrently finishing theFAFSAand explain encourage applications. To make positive every family is getting the most financial fortify possible, a Mos financial encourage consultant evaluations each case and negotiates with colleges for elevated awards.

“This day, the biggest say is other folks think they are no longer eligible for financial encourage correct because of of how the problem is designed,” Yahyaoui said. “You’re imagined to correct saunter forward and dangle a make that has 200 questions and then ship it delight in a bottle within the ocean and await months.”

Mos will entire a fats-scale open this summer season and indirectly form out other nation’s college financial encourage methods because of of the fresh infusion of capital and the high-profile relationships Yahyaoui has solid in only 365 days residing within the Bay Dwelling.

In the extinguish, it was Yahyaoui’s activism that granted her a impress into the opaque world of Silicon Valley VC. Because it appears to be like, angel investor Khaled Helioui, a fellow Tunisian immigrant who’d taken up build of residing in San Francisco, was acquainted with Yahyaoui’s work and when he heard she had relocated to the Bay Dwelling to open a technology startup, he desired to know exactly what she was constructing. This day, he’s a Mos investor and board member and it was his introductions that helped Yahyaoui immediate and assuredly shut her seed spherical.

An early angel investor inUber,Helioui connected Yahyaoui along with his friendGarrett Camp,the very prosperous co-founder and chairman of the experience-hailing wide, who was equipped on Mos’s mission exact off the bat.

“I agree with because of Garrett is an immigrant, he is conscious of what it is to suffer with types,” Yahyaoui said. “He was an wide believer. He if truth be told made it so easy for me because of he said, adequate, right here’s an place of job, correct preserve and work.”

Camp then launched her toJohn Doerr,the chairman of the esteemed VC firm Kleiner Perkins, identified for his a hit bets on firms delight in Google and Amazon. With Camp and Doerr on board, Mos didn’t fight to raise extra capital; if truth be told, Yahyaoui was in an weird and wonderful space of being in a position to reject investors whose values and vision for Mos clearly didn’t align with hers.

Tearing down boundaries

Yahyaoui isn’t within the startup enterprise to derive rich off college students attempting to navigate their contrivance via the absorbently costly route of of constructing consume of to and attending college. She’s fragment of a increasing class of founders out to show cloak that you just would be able to pair profits with correct morals and lead project-backed values-based totally mostly firms.

“I know if I created the identical say as an NGO, I will comprise already raised $100 million, but I delight in the accountability of enterprise,” she said. “We can perform firms which will possible be correct for folk.”

Yahyaoui’s anecdote, from being exiled from her home country at a younger age to combating an authoritarian regime is no longer particular person that’s ever been urged earlier than in Silicon Valley.

As effectively as to being a trailblazing human rights suggest, she’s a girl, an immigrant, “uneducated” by Silicon Valley standards and a first-time tech founder that was in a position to experience true into a gathering with John Doerr and experience out with a term sheet.

If she’s a hit in constructing a world edtech enterprise, she’ll be emblematic of the meritocratic custom The Valley has falsely claimed to uphold. Despite the reality that she’s no longer a hit, she’ll comprise torn down boundaries for other underrepresented founders and written a success anecdote fitting for this fresh era of accountability in tech.