Khan Academy: Sal Khan
Maren Bruin for NPR
In 2009, Sal Khan walked away from a high-paying job to start a business that had no way of making money. His idea to launch a non-profit teaching platform was ignited five years earlier, when he was helping his young cousins do math homework over the computer.
They loved his clear explanations and soon he was posting free tutorials on Youtube, where they started to attract the attention of thousands of users around the world. Sal realized he could help democratize learning by building a free platform to teach math, science, and the humanities.
Today, Khan Academy offers hundreds of free recorded tutorials in dozens of languages. During the pandemic, its popularity has surged to 30 million users a month.