Cambiar Thrive's "Big Ideas Challenge" Awards $2M+ to Put the Power of Data in the Hands of Students and Families to Fuel Student-Led Success

SAN DIEGO, March 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Cambiar Education, with support from the Walton Family Foundation, Bezos Family Foundation, and Lemnis, today announced the award recipients of Cambiar Thrive's "Big Ideas Challenge," a national competition designed to mobilize both students and caregivers with data to fuel student success and wellbeing. By galvanizing new and creative solutions, the Thrive Big Ideas Challenge aims to make academic and non-academic student data easy-to-access, meaningful, and actionable, and support organizations as they design their work for impact, scale, and sustainability.

The Thrive Challenge awarded funds to 19 grantees, representing a range of ideas, organizations, leaders, and communities, with a subset of grantees eligible for $250,000+ of future follow-on funding. The Thrive Challenge supports organizations that are closing the information gap in one of two tracks by equipping:

1. Students with insight into their own data and ways to use it to support meaningful outcomes;
2. Parents and caregivers with innovative, scalable tools to better understand and support their children's learning journeys. 

"Information is the foundation of opportunity. With the launch of this new cohort, we are moving beyond mere reporting to true student and caregiver ownership," says Christina Heitz, CEO and Founder of Cambiar Education. "By putting actionable insights directly into the hands of students and caregivers, Cambiar Thrive is bridging the information divide and igniting a new era of student-led success. This is how we transform the trajectory of a generation."

The Thrive Challenge builds on the momentum from the inaugural Thrive cohort. Currently, Thrive's investments enable grantees to reach 10+ million families and students, making essential student data more accessible and actionable than ever before. This work also unlocked key insights into the systemic need for solutions–and how they can be met. To accelerate our mission of closing the education information gap, Cambiar Thrive plans to publish these insights to catalyze broader innovation and scale our collective impact.

"We recognized that, crucially, students must be included in this process," explains Derwin Sisnett, the Cambiar Partner who leads the Thrive program. "When students understand and use their own educational data, learning becomes more meaningful and relevant. This builds agency and prepares them to adapt and thrive beyond school."

To truly bridge the information gap, innovation must exist at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and authentic human connection. The Thrive Challenge highlights that while data provides the map, it is the human relationship that drives the journey.

This Thrive Challenge cohort represents a varied frontier of solutions that leverage technology to deepen—rather than replace—human connection. By combining AI-driven and other technology-related insights with relationship-centered models, these grantees ensure that data serves the people at the heart of education.

• Family Engagement Lab I Closing the Loop Between Home and School: Family Engagement Lab builds partnerships between teachers and families by facilitating ongoing communication and collaboration about learning. Their signature tool FASTalk uses AI-driven personalization to deliver curriculum-aligned activities to families in their home language, giving them concrete ways to support student learning in sync with what's happening in the classroom.
• Uprooted Academy | Synchronizing the Support Circle: Uprooted Academy uses its AI powered college and career advising platform to act as a "connective tissue" between students, families, and counselors. The technology ensures no information is lost in transition, allowing the human support system to be more present, synchronized, and active in a student's most pivotal life decisions.
• Eedi Labs: From Misconceptions to Mastery: Eedi's diagnostic engine helps students to quickly identify and fix common mistakes in math. By providing clear insights into what students need help with, Eedi makes it easier for families to support every child's progress.
• CAST | Simulations as a Career Gateway: CAST, with partners ProjectSet and NextFlex, is building a work-based learning platform that immerses students in authentic manufacturing and STEM challenges. Based on the principles of Universal Design for Learning, these inclusive simulations provide students with clear, viable career pathways and caregivers with the information to help guide those decisions.
• Emote Education I Transforming Insights into Action: Emote's "Care Copilot" uses AI to turn insights into clear, compassionate guidance for schools and families. By translating complex student signals into actionable steps, it ensures every adult can intervene early and support a child's success with confidence.

See a full list of Thrive Challenge grantees.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Carla Punsalan McLoughlin                                                                                               
[email protected]

About Cambiar Education
We turn innovative ideas into action and impact. We created Cambiar to change the marketplace for education innovation to prove undeniably that every student can succeed and thrive. Cambiar operates at the speed of innovation, propelling 100+ groundbreaking ventures led by founders with unshakeable optimism and courage; building in-house initiatives that serve 27+ million students in areas with the greatest potential for change; and cultivating a formidable community of connected ventures, anchored in our commitment to creating solutions for the most vulnerable youth. Visit us at cambiareducation.org and follow us on LinkedIn.

About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. We work in three areas: improving education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support and investing in our home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. To learn more, visit waltonfamilyfoundation.org and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X.

About the Bezos Family Foundation
The Bezos Family Foundation is a private foundation created by Mike and Jackie Bezos and their family. Since 2000, the Foundation has partnered with remarkable organizations and individuals to transform how we prepare young people from prenatal to young adulthood to pursue their own path for success and meaningfully contribute to society. In addition to grantmaking, the Foundation runs two in-house programs: Bezos Scholars Program and Vroom.

About Lemnis
Lemnis is a public charity dedicated to expanding learning for all. Our vision is to create a future of the Unlimited Learner, where every young person can thrive in a time of dramatic change. Lemnis believes that to unlock limitless possibilities for learners, we must create a sense of belonging and community, apply findings from neuroscience of learning and social sciences, leverage pro-social artificial intelligence and digital technology, and generate new ecosystems and supports that are learner centered. The Lemnis Collective acquires mission-aligned education organizations, both for-profit assets and non-profits with earned revenue like InsideTrack. The Lemnis Alliance provides grants to entrepreneurs focused on innovations in the future of learning, primarily through intermediaries and accelerators like Cambiar. Lemnis also invests in mission-aligned funds and for-profit organizations to accelerate their impact. For more information, visit www.lemnis.org.

SOURCE Cambiar Education