Arif on partnerships

- [Voiceover] So Arf, what do you do here at Khan Academy. - (laughing) That's a great question. So I lead a lot of our corporate and strategic partnerships with external parties. - [Voiceover] And what are some examples of that that are already in place? - Everything from, for example, in international. So we have a relationship with the Tata Trusts, to help drive our work in Khan Academy India, and domestically, for example, with the Educator Channel, we partner with, for example, Google and Hyatt to bring LearnStorm to your different locations. And then another relationship, for example, in the Direct Learner Play, is with Bank of America in terms of bringing personal financial education and career guidance to our learners. So really, partnership sort of is, it's sort of under, it supports the work that all of our channels are doing. - [Voiceover] And the topic of this video is, is thinking about things that we've done as an organization so far in 2016. So what are some of the highlights from your point-of-view, at least we're making this video in early June, what are some of the highlights a year to date from your group, for the partnership, from your point of view and actually just your team's point of view. And I guess that might be one of the accomplishment, that there is a team now. - That is a big one. (laughing) So I think this time last year, I just joined Khan Academy. And so it was for a while we were like a team of one. Right now the partnerships team is a subset of the overall sustainability team, so the way we're structured, is just there are folks who go after more traditional philanthropic funding and that tends to be, and that's the (mumbles) and her team. And then now, the partnerships team is a team of three, and we go after a corporate and a corporate, and corporate philanthropic funding. - [Voiceover] And so that sort of accomplishment in its own right, that we actually now have a proper capacity and team around this. I mean, what are some of the stand outs in 2016 so far that have been accomplished? - Yeah, so I think one of the big ones was engaging with Bank of America, where we signed a contract with them to extend our partnership into for another three years. We've had a long standing relationship with them from three years back, now we're moving into phase two of what that partnership looks like. And that's a, it's providing us a lot of funding, but we're also working on content that I think the organization is genuinely excited about with them around, careers, and providing guidance to folks who are trying to figure out what to do next. So that's a pretty big example, and it provides us about more than 10 percent of our annual funding needs on a year-to-year basis. So pretty big deal. I think another big one is our partnerships via LearnStorm. And a great example of that is with Hyatt, where this time last year when we were all talking to Hyatt, it's like we knew we wanted to do something and we just weren't quite sure what. And we're sort of sold them on this idea of LearnStorm and they sort of went along with it for a little while in Chigago. And now that we've sort of wrapped up LearStorm and all credit to the LearStorm team for delivering on this, but now by the end of it, Marco (mumbles) who is (mumbles) CEO, he was hugging all of us and was like, thank you for doing this, we can't wait to do this again next year. And so, I'm bringing corporate partners on board with us to do good. And sort of making sure that there's sort of a line to continuing to engage with us is I think a pretty big, pretty big deal. - [Voiceover] Yeah, and what are you excited about going forward? - So one of the big ones is, we think about, for example, the need to grow our content library. And with this specific focus on core content needs, these are things like middle school science, all the way through to other academic subjects like AP economics and what have you. And I'm excited about being able to engage as we've clarified what our content priorities are, engaging partners to start to support, to directly support those core priorities for us, and we're designing ways in which to sort of recognize and embrace partners, and where that's very tasteful to Khan Academy. But really, really, quite a win-win situation for both us as well as the partner. So a lot of it is about defining what those win-wins look like. - [Voiceover] Awesome. Well thanks, Arf, and I've worked very closely with you on a lot of this, and say hi to your roommate or whoever is there. But I worked very closely with you on a lot of this and I know you're just offering a sample of some of the things, you've facilitated conversations with many other folks including Spokes who are gonna help sponsor LearnStorm next year. A lot of other corporate partnerships that are gonna facilitate some of these content you're talking about, so yeah, very exciting. - Yeah, and the last one I wanna add is, the other exciting thing is on the international front. We're working close to with the international team to think about things like, bringing Khan Academy to China, bringing Khan Academy to the Middle East, bringing Khan Academy to Indonesia. So there's a lot of exciting things in the works. I'm really looking forward to seeing where it goes. - [Voiceover] Awesome. Well thank you and your team. - Awesome, thanks, Al. - [Voiceover] (whispering) Stop recording.