Marco De Rossi

CEO of WeSchool

Since 2016, WeSchool has grown to over 70 employees across three countries, closed a 6.4M€ Series A funding round, been used by over 2 million learners and has been recommended as one of the three platforms by the Italian Ministry of Education for distance learning (alongside Microsoft and Google).

At age 32, Marco is a champion of digital education. His passion for education started as a teenager. At the age of 14, he asked his teachers where he could learn how to code. Everyone around him shook his head. This frustration prompted him to found his first free online school, the “OilProject” to self-enroll himself and learn about the topics he wanted, on his terms.

This innovative spirit and builder personality pushes Marco to pursue disruptive ideas in a quest to deliver meaningful change through technological innovation at times when common sense and the status quo do not necessarily approve.

He strongly believes that education is the only “social technology” that can enable anybody to become independent Knowledge Age citizens and thinkers. In the post-industrial and tech-driven age, “knowledge” is the weapon to stay relevant and survive, while education is the technology that will empower individuals to be independent, autonomous and empowered.

This mission has come to life time and again. In 2004, he delivered education via videos on the Internet when YouTube didn’t exist. In 2016, he betted on blended learning via a mobile app when it was illegal to use mobile phones in physical classrooms. During the Covid crisis, he shifted his attention to training educators to adapt to teaching in an online environment.

Along the way, WeSchool has partnered with leading companies, such as:

- J.P. Morgan
- Vodafone
- AWS
- IKEA
- Multiple NGOs and educational institutions

to deliver educational projects that align with WeSchool’s vision. Beyond that, the ed-tech powerhouse has worked with the European Ministry of Education and UNESCO to support the development of educational systems globally.

Today - among other innovations - WeSchool foresees the learning inequalities that are resulting from traditional learning models and is convinced AI and machine learning can fight this. The response? Innovating the way we teach through technology: Smart tutoring to help educators forecast and prevent dropouts.

With this background and experience, Marco can bring value to conversations by discussing: how different ways of thinking lead to meaningful change, how he built a successful European Ed-tech, inequality in education and how to combat it, tech in education and where it’s headed, and blockchain and AI technology.

In 2022 he successfully exited https://www.hal.xyz/ a blockchain company he co-founded and was acquired by ConsenSys (Ethereum cofounder Joe Lubin’s company).

Beyond his expertise, Marco is a philosopher at heart and is fond of discussing social impact, Web3, contemporary arts, wine, and AI.