Using the ENTR Certificate to Overcome Challenges in the Education Industry
Kilah Dickey applies her passion and expertise for secondary school education to solving problems that haven’t been addressed for years. After graduating from Purdue in 2011, with a major in Health and Fitness, Kilah ventured into the field of education by first getting a license to become an English teacher. It was then that she noticed when students transitioned from one secondary school to another, they were not able to get their academic transcripts in a timely fashion, and as a result, wound up being credit deficient or ineligible for a lot of classes.
“The whole system is designed in such a way that when moving from one school to another, students have to get their transcript data entered manually into the new school’s database,” said Kilah. “Often, there were either delays in obtaining their transcripts, or the transcripts were not available at all, which caused some students to be at risk of not graduating.”
After witnessing this for five years, she decided to do something about it and started Transcriptly, which is trying to solve this problem by offering smoother transfers of student records. A few months ago, Transcriptly partnered with Ed-Fi, a company in the education industry that came up with a way to streamline the movement of student data from schools to the State. Currently, the two companies are working together to move this data from school to school.
Kilah describes her journey at Purdue as not easy. She did not live on campus, which made it difficult to connect with peers. She says that the Certificate of Entrepreneurship and Innovation was probably the best part of her education at Purdue. While she describes her ENTR classes as very challenging, she says they motivated her to push herself beyond her limits.
Her determination pushed her to make Transcriptly a reality. It started by pitching her idea at Ignite Columbus, a pitch competition held in April 2022, where she won the “Most Innovative” Award. Through this, she was able to meet her technical co-founder, Brian Slater, who was interested in developing the platform. She also found excellent mentors among the organizers for Ignite Columbus. She then received funding from Elevate Ventures that will allow them to survive for a year or two. “We are making good connections,”says Kilah.
The Transcriptly team currently consists of Kilah Dickey and Brian Slater. The company was officially launched in June 2022. They are currently working on branding and marketing activities and are actively looking to connect with technology directors. They were recently approved for the AWS EdStart Accelerator program!