An excerpt from Maria’s Journey 

Entrepreneurship has run in Maria’s family; with her father, sister, and brother being entrepreneurs, it was natural for her to enter the business world. Maria was born in Medellin, Colombia, and grew up in San Jose, Costa Rica. She was keenly interested in learning about and understanding the business facets. To pursue studies in economics, she went to NYU in New York. She soon had the good fortune of landing a career-changing internship during her studies, which required her to relocate to Puno, Peru, to oversee the purchase of a microfinance business. There, she realized that profitable, fast-growing companies could also have a social impact. After graduating college, she worked at JP Morgan Chase as an analyst and associate for 5 years in the Alternative Investments team. It gave her the best preparation, work ethic, and maturity for becoming an entrepreneur. She then moved to Lima, Peru, where she decided to start a company in a space with immense growth and impact potential—”once I started learning about the Edtech space, there was no way back,” she says.

Being an entrepreneur, Maria was always determined to convert her passion into a profitable business. She debunks a common misconception in her industry: that businesses like Crack The Code exist to make an impact rather than to make money. For Crack The Code, this is not the case. The education and EdTech industries have the potential to be very good businesses, profitable, and fast-growing. “Its unit economics tend to be different than other tech industries, which is why it is important to have EdTech advisors,” she adds. Since Crack The Code’s inception, it has propagated to enroll 13,000 students, starting with just 20. Maria has worked extremely hard, exhibited incredible resilience, and persevered to achieve this level. “Humility and resourcefulness have also been key qualities that have helped me get where I am,” Maria adds.

A Blessing in Disguise

The pandemic has accelerated the company’s growth. The lockdown has opened a lot of new opportunities to Crack The Code. The technology adoption that came with it enabled Maria and her team to expand faster and to more remote parts of the region. It also came with great innovations in EdTech and streaming platforms that they harnessed to improve their product, the academic experience, and student learning. The product front of the company focuses on improving its student experience and restructuring its product offering, which will hope to form agile students across the different areas within the CS space. The company is also constantly changing how parents can support their children as they go through school. Meanwhile, on the marketing front, it is positioning its brand as the category leader in computer science for Hispanics. Maria believes that this implementation will drive growth and innovation altogether. The institution is also experimenting with the Hispanic market in the US—an immense opportunity with tremendous growth and impact potential.