Shai Reshef

Shai Reshef is the Founder & President of University of the People, the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution, which he established following 20 years in the international education market. From 1989 to 2005, Reshef served as Chairman of the Kidum Group, a for-profit educational services company which was sold to Kaplan, Inc. in 2005. Between 2001 and 2004, while continuing as the chairman of Kidum, Reshef lived in the Netherlands where he chaired KIT eLearning, a subsidiary of Kidum, the eLearning partner of the University of Liverpool and the first online university outside of the United States. The company was sold to Laureate in 2004. In 2009, Reshef was named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business,” joined the United Nations’ Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development as a High-level Adviser, was named an Ashoka Fellow and spoke internationally at conferences including DLD: Digital, Life, Design in Munich and the World Economic Forum on the Middle East in Jordan. Reshef holds an M.A. from the University of Michigan in Chinese Politics.