The 2015 Tech Impact Awards: Education

WINNER

FAITHLIFE/LOGOS BIBLE SOFTWARE
Location: Bellingham | Employees: 350

Bob Pritchett sees his Bible and faith study publishing companys branch into online social media, Faithlife.com, as perfectly natural. Church, he observes, is one of the first real social networks and most enduring.

The Bellingham firm is among the oldest electronic publishers, growing from a couple of programmers in a basement in 1992 into the largest developer of Bible-study tools. It partners with more than 150 multilingual publishers to make more than 53,000 Bible-study resources available to global customers.

Faithlife serves both individuals and church ministries, expanding within the past five years to launch services like Vyrso, a Christian e-bookstore and e-reader app, Proclaim church presentation software and Faithlife Groups, which allows Christians from around the world to connect and share ideas.

Through electronic media, its three million members can explore their faith in great depth, studying New Testament texts in the original Greek or discussing issues like homelessness across several churches. As Pritchett observes, these were opportunities until recently available only in seminaries, and making biblical education readily accessible to anyone with a smartphone has great implications for Christians around the world.

SILVER AWARD

CODE FELLOWS
Location: Seattle | Employees: 15

Code Fellows offers what few trade schools dare: a guaranteed job within nine months of completing one of its courses or a refund of tuition. With the tech industrys endless hunger for software development talent, thats a promise that can be made confidently to its graduates of 8-week programs in high-demand developer skills like iOS, JavaScript, Python, Cloud Computing, or C#/.NET. In just two years, those programs have tripled from six to 18, with expansion to Portland and Chicago.