Christopher Pruijsen

As the interim team lead and PM for PruExpert Labs at Prudential Corporation Asia, I led the unit to create e-learning experiences and digital training materials for more than 600,000 insurance agents, staff, and trainers across eight countries, as part of a successful COVID-19-accelerated digital transformation effort. This involved coordinating with 50+ stakeholders, managing and coordinating an extended team of ±20, and touching the realms of people, project, product, and program management. This was a nine-month full-time remote Toptal engagement.

I led a team of senior designers and engineers to create two products: an IoT microcontroller for K-12 code education and a custom e-learning platform built with scalability and compliance in mind on AWS.

The work was done full-time for a California-based Toptal client over nine months. At that point, both products saw a successful launch (a learning platform used internally by the business with its customers, and the microcontroller saw its first production run sold out at launch).

On the industrial design side (casing, packaging), I collaborated with the very talented Gen Suzuki, who, among others, designed the core Casper and PillPack product lines. In collaboration with Rolf Jensen, an award-winning art director, we created custom studio footage and animations with an international market angle, including market research to ensure our brand appealed to the intended core demographics.
The work was done in 2019.

The application is a leading behavior change app targeted at prediabetics, helping them lose weight and adopt a healthier lifestyle through diet and exercise changes.

I joined the team post-Series A as a consultant to help them turn their proof of concept into a scalable product. This included reworking their customer experience, analytics setup, notifications, customer service flows, internationalization, and a comprehensive white labeling strategy.

Based on my contribution, the company implemented a number of changes that enabled it to win a national contract with the NHS (the UK, 600,000 users) and three private insurers (the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK). The work was done in 2019.

Savvyreading is an early childhood education service offering remote reading skills coaching in individual and group formats. Savvy was started in late 2020 and has scaled to over $2m ARR by the time I left, without external funding.

Da-Mas.org was a crowdfunding platform that enabled teachers to fund projects in their classrooms via donations from corporate and individual donors, launched in partnership with Teach for Mexico.

Sterio.me saves teachers time by automating the homework process from preparation, distribution, and marking to administration, and improves access to relevant out of classroom learning reinforcement materials for learners. Sterio.me is accessible via basic phone/SMS, no internet required, and we also have an Android/web product for contexts with more access to technology. Architected and build a custom LMS within the company, to support K-12 SMS, IVR and mobile app-based homework flows. The company grew to about ten staff members at its peak.

Awards and Funding:
• Finalist of SXSW Launch EDU 2015
• Nominee for Young Mobile Innovator of the Year—GSMA Global Mobile Awards 2015
• The winning project in "Education for All"​ at the UN World Summit Youth Award 2014
• Second place: World Summit Award: African Content + Education 2014
• Start-Up Chile (Gen X) and 1% Club Awardee
• World Innovation Summit in Education (WISE) Accelerator

I co-founded FounderBus UK and StartupBus Africa (which turned into Ampion.org). They held hackathons on buses through various cities, with a focus on regional impact.

I helped form and shape teams, defined strategy, enrolled mentors, speakers, partners, and sponsors, and assisted in recruitment and marketing efforts for all three organizations during their founding periods.

The Founderbus UK in December 2012, in collaboration with four European StartupBuses, was a big success, ending at the Le Web startup competition. FounderBus and StartupBus have since merged.

The first-ever StartupBus Africa 18-22 November 2013 (Africa.startupbus.com/) from Harare, Zimbabwe to Cape Town, South Africa (2,500KM, via Johannesburg) was a phenomenal success. See below for some of the press about the bus (BBC, CNN, Deutsche Welle, Berliner Zeitung, and more).

Later, established as a nonprofit in 2014, AMPION (Ampion.org) organized four venture buses across 14 countries with 160 participants in 2014, and in 2015, we ran five buses in 15 countries with 200 participants. The most promising ventures were incubated with help from mentors, partners, and investors.