Swarmed after school by concerned Korean parents, Heejae Lim often found her mom acting as an unofficial liaison between her teachers and friends’ families who spoke little to no English.
Lim, an education technology entrepreneur and TED Fellow, watched as her mother would answer questions every day about how to support their child’s learning, parent-teacher conferences and cultural barriers around school jargon.
Growing up in an immigrant family, Lim resonated with their struggles and later explored solutions to family-school partnerships as the founder and CEO of TalkingPoints, a communication app that helps multilingual and underserved families connect with their child’s teachers.
“Education is one of the biggest issues we need to solve in this country,” Lim tells The 74. “And how can we solve this through technology?”
TalkingPoints has supported more than 600 schools and districts – over 3 million families and teachers, where 70% of students served are students of color and 89% come from Title I schools.
Lim delved into this further at the TED2022: A New Era conference during her TED Talk: “The most powerful yet overlooked resource in schools.”
“We’re playing the role my mom had for the school and my friends’ families — the communicator, the explainer, the coach, the translator and the go-between,” Lim said in her TED Talk. “When teachers and families work together everyone wins.”