Meet our founder: Sam Hoyt
School was always my safe space, my home away from home. There, my overwhelming curiosity about the world and the ways things worked was not just allowed, but encouraged. I explored many places and cultures through projects that I have since visited in real life. To me, learning is meant to be used and to inspire a better life.
In 2010, I moved to New Orleans to start my Ph.D. in Global Development at Tulane University. I intended to continue to look at education as a tool to escape poverty in Mozambique-the topic of my Master's research. While taking classes, I took a fellowship that worked to help local students prepare for college by sponsoring AP curriculum development. I quickly learned that the college access problem was not a curriculum problem. The students I encountered had learning gaps across 12+ years of school. That was the problem. I started learning about the complex reasons those gaps existed in my studies, but in those schools, and eventually in my own classroom, I worked diligently to close every learning gap of every child who was willing to work with me. I became a master math tutor, an ACT prep guru, and a college counselor to help my students. After five years in the schools, I decided that student success would be the topic of my dissertation. Using data from a New Orleans public high school, I sought to determine what high school factors best predicted college success or failure. Interestingly, measures of effort were the only factors that made a consistent significant difference in college completion.
Given this information, I decided to move to the college level to help inspire students to continue to put in the effort. I spent five years at the college level helping students understand what they could do to get the most out of their studies and meet their job goals post-graduation. When the pandemic moved all classes online, I was a resource for students and faculty to ensure quality learning continued. Unfortunately, the realities facing students and teachers outside the classroom changed how each could participate in their now virtual classrooms. Many needs went unmet-for both groups. We now know that online school had devastating consequences for student learning at the K-12 level, and that some groups experienced a far greater proportion of the impact.
In 2022, I created Upgrade ED as a way to start to tackle this problem. In 2024, I left the formal education system in order to concentrate my efforts on helping students and families by building out services. I had two underlying goals:
1. Be accessible to the broadest population of students and families possible.
2. Identify and close gaps created by the existing educational system.
I know that many students do not share my experience of school, but I want to help more students achieve the positive learning outcomes they desire. Through every service, I aim to inspire curiosity in my students to find their passion, set goals, and master the skills they need to accomplish everything they aspire to achieve. Through empathic listening, I continue to help students explore what is possible and chart their own course to realize the life they want.
