Beyond the Classroom: CBS Founders Rethinking Education

From financial literacy and health education to navigating the college journey, CBS founders are building new approaches to how young people learn and prepare for the future.

This panel will bring together CBS entrepreneurs working across the education space to share the stories behind their ventures: the problems that inspired them, how they turned their ideas into businesses, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. We’ll also explore their experiences building while at CBS, the role the Columbia entrepreneurial ecosystem has played in their journeys, and their advice for aspiring founders looking to turn an idea into something real.

Alexandra Bono ’22, Founder, Pelican Invests

Jiaxin Zhang ’25, Co-founder, Sara Technology

Joyce Romero '26, Founder, Cuatro

This panel will be moderated by Brandon Lima '27, Co-Founder, EdAstra.

Alexandra Bono ’22Alexandra Bono is the founder of Pelican Invests, a bestselling author, speaker on economic empowerment, and impact venture builder dedicated to helping families build strong financial foundations together. Alexandra created Penny the Pelican to make financial literacy fun, approachable, and meaningful for young readers. Her work has reached thousands of students through partnerships with schools, nonprofits, and educational organizations, delivering accessible and engaging financial literacy tools for both classrooms and homes.Jiaxin Zhang ’25Jia Zhang is the CEO and co-founder of Sara Technology, Inc., which helps children practice their speech sounds through three products. The Sara for SLP app puts a speech-language pathologist’s (SLP) articulation caseload in one place: track progress as children practice, run both group and individual sessions, send homework to parents and see the results come back, and automatically generate reports. The Sara app, for home, keeps practice going between visits with drills, gamified practice, and fun reward games, plus instant feedback they can hear and see, including mouth modeling videos. The two apps sync, so what happens at home shows up in the SLP’s view, and the practice plan follows the child. Both cover 23 speech sounds with AI speech scoring that allows for SLP override. The third product is a set of tap-to-speak R sound books, where every page and target is tappable, for families who want help with R without a screen.

Joyce Romero '26Joyce Romero is the founder and CEO of Cuatro, a multilingual career development platform for high school parents to prepare students for what's next after graduation by pairing personalized career guidance with financial planning tools to make decisions clearer and more affordable. Joyce is building the map she once had to draw for herself. She grew up speaking only Spanish and built her own path from there: top of her class, $500K in funding secured, a triple major, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. Today, she's focused on helping families make college affordable, something every family can navigate with confidence. It's the one and only place where a parent and student can see what funding they qualify for, what college really costs, and exactly what to do next in their language.

Brandon Lima '27Brandon Lim is the founder of AstraSomnia, the company behind EdAstra, an AI-powered SAT preparation app designed to make personalized learning more accessible. A Columbia MBA candidate and Senior Consultant in Deloitte’s AI & Data practice, he brings experience in AI strategy, governance, and implementation alongside firsthand work advising students through college admissions. His work connects technology with a practical question: how can AI help more students turn ambition into progress?