Hla Hla Win

Ms. Hla Hla Win is CEO and Co-Founder of 360ed, an EdTech social enterprise based in Yangon, Myanmar. She is on a mission to democratize access to quality education. 360ed leverages advanced technologies of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with 3-D, concept and animation arts on mobile phones to build new engaging self-directed distance-learning tools for K-12 students to bring scalable, immediate, and exponential impacts in transforming the way human beings learn and teach starting from Myanmar and South East Asia.

She is a momtrepreneur, the daughter of a teacher and grew up in a modest part of Dagon, Yangon. Hla Hla struggled in school as a dyslexic student and made it through with the help of her teacher-mother. She is committed to expanding education for all and giving every student and teacher the latest digital tools to learn.

Hla Hla launched 360ed in Silicon Valley with the help of Google Innovation grant. In late 2016 she returned home to build the company in Myanmar (now a team of 70+ full timers). 360ed produces a product line of AR-based learning tools for K-12+ students in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) and the sciences (STEM). 360ed is shipping product to schools and students in Myanmar, and is now expanding to the rest of ASEAN, Japan and soon to the United States.

In 2019 360ed signed a memorandum of understanding with Myanmar ministry of education to accelerate the education reform process. Annually 360ed has now made free access to English apps for up to four million students from Grade 1, 2, 3 and 6. Like-minded private donors and companies also joined the mission of 360ed by sponsoring the development cost of the apps so that 360ed could digitalize the curriculum with Augmented reality mobile apps.

Ms. Hla Hla Win was one of the Social Entrepreneurs of the Year Awardees of the Schwab Foundation in 2019, the World Economic Forum’s sister organization. Her innovations were recognized in 2019 by NiKKei Superior Products and Service Award for Excellence, Japan. 360ed’s work received UNESCO’s award for innovation in digital technologies in February 2018. She also received the Emerging Young Leader Award from William Penn University in 2018. Recently, her enterprise has won “Best in Business” title awarded by Myanmar Pride Awards in March 5, 2020.

Hla Hla received her Master’s degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, with a big emphasis on educational policy and development. Her undergraduate degree in Education is from William Penn University in Iowa, and attended a leadership diploma from East West Center at the University of Hawaii. She was also selected for the Singularity University program for entrepreneurs, based in NASA research center in Silicon Valley, which is focused on addressing global grand challenges that can impact a billion people.