Board of Directors
Chance Wilson
Chairman, CEO & Founder
Larry East
Vice Chairman & Board Director
Teri Myers
Lead Independent Board Director
Executive Committee
Patrik Westerlund
Chief Commercial Officer
Mark Jackson
Chief Communications Officer
Kimberley Battistella
Head of Learning & Culture
Charlie Harrison
Chief Digital Officer
Krys Piotrowski
Chief Marketing Officer
Our Story
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WGI began with a single question: What if every child on Earth could learn to read?
In 2014, 14-year-old Chance Wilson noticed that many of his classmates at a Baton Rouge middle school couldn’t read or write. He decided to do something about it. What started as the Wilson Global Initiative—a local nonprofit offering peer-led tutoring—has since become a global literacy movement.
Over the past decade, WGI has launched grassroots programs in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, and formed partnerships with global brands like GE, Coca-Cola, and HBO. Our reach has spanned continents—but our mission has stayed the same: universal literacy.
Today, our nonprofit work continues as WGI Worldwide Philanthropies. At the same time, we’re preparing to launch our for-profit arm, WGI Interactive LLC, to build game-changing education technology—starting with Lyra, an AI-powered literacy platform designed to reach the most learners, at the deepest level, across the world.
Our next goal is our boldest yet:
Teach one billion children to read and write.
Through epic storytelling, immersive gameplay, and the science of reading, we’re reimagining how the world learns.
Watch our inspiring story told below on NBC’s TODAY: