Venture:
HeyBodhi
Founders:
Neesha Nanda ’00SW and Samantha Gleisten
Industry:
Education
Venture Type:
For-profit
What is the social or environmental issue being addressed?
American K-12 education is in a workforce crisis. Only 53 percent of superintendents say the job is worth it, down from 59 percent two years ago. Eighty-five percent of principals report frequent stress. Ninety-three percent of assistant principals show emotional exhaustion. Teachers leave the profession at rates districts cannot replace. The cost is borne by students: when leaders burn out and teachers leave, instructional continuity collapses, school climate fractures, and the children least likely to have stable adults at home lose the only consistent ones they had. This is not a recruitment problem. It is a retention infrastructure problem.
Innovation:
Two innovations work together. First, architectural: HeyBodhi is built to grow the human and serve the relationship — anti-sycophantic by design, in a moment when consumer AI is eroding the relational intelligence helping professions depend on. Second, structural: we have engineered the platform from day one for research embedding rather than retrofit. Through our design-based implementation research partnership with Columbia Teachers College, measurement happens during build, not after. We are not running a study on a finished tool. We are building the first AI coaching infrastructure whose evidence base is engineered alongside the product.
Read More:
Unscripted Intelligence Podcast: HeyBodhi
Human Intelligence Movement
March 2026