It’s been five years since the start of Project Access! Take a trip with us down memory lane in this week's interview with our current CEO Ingrid Udd Sundvor who reflects on our amazing impact on levelling access to education globally.

In the month of June this year, Project Access celebrated its five-year anniversary since being founded by three university students back in 2016. Today, we have grown into a full-size social impact start-up, with over 4000+ mentees helped to date, 5000+ student mentors and 200+ team members around the globe.

Our journey to date has taken us a long way in our mission of making top-quality university education attainable regardless of social background. ‘We have gone from our baby years into our teenage years’ says Ingrid, our current CEO and previously our Global Director of Talent.

Reflecting on 5 years of growth: impact, changes, and challenges

This year marked our official expansion into several top universities in Europe, now covering even more of the top universities globally in addition to institutions in the UK and US. Beyond our flagship peer-to-peer mentorships which date back to the very beginning, we have made significant progress in our product offering in just the last year: ‘some of the biggest changes that we made, which I'm extremely proud of, is making our product a three-part intervention. We now have community support and program support in addition to the peer-to-peer mentorship,’ says Ingrid. This way, our mentees not only benefit from tailored guidance from our volunteers but also get to meet other ambitious applicants and understand all the options available to them in the process.

That’s not to say that we haven’t experienced our share of setbacks in the last 5 years. As a student-led organisation spanning multiple time zones in supporting applications from more than 110 countries, our rapid growth has required strategic re-evaluation to certify our ability to grow in the long-term. As Ingrid explains: ‘we grew very quickly, which was amazing to see, but at the same time we needed better prioritisation. In the last two years, we have spent a lot of time on prioritising the innovation and improvement of our internal structures. For example, we have built talent structures that enable us to on-board around one hundred new individuals a year. We can now be very ambitious and scale quicker because we've taken the time to build these foundational structures.’

It’s hard to stress the significance of our talented people who are responsible for our success, but like Ingrid I can vouch that it is the Project Access culture that makes our organisation such a unique place to volunteer. ‘We're one of those startups where we truly celebrate failure,’ she shares. ‘I don't think I've ever heard of my team members or my team leaders ever having been annoyed when things have gone wrong because we learn from our failures and we bring our learnings forward onto the next leaders.’

Looking ahead: what’s in store for Project Access?

 Since the start, the most significant challenge for the organisation has been establishing our financial sustainability. ‘Project Access is very dependent on the generous donations we get from corporates or grants. We need to build financially sustainable income streams, and that's going to be a key priority in the next year.’

 The incoming three-area strategic roadmap, due to be released in the coming weeks, considers (1) horizontal growth, (2) targeting the right students, and (3) sets out concrete plans for an improved revenue model. The incoming Global Leadership Team will drive this strategic change which stretches 3 years into the future. ‘It’s quite amazing that we've come to a point where we want to think three years ahead and not just one.’

On moving into a new academic year with a new GLT under her belt, Ingrid says ‘I'm extremely proud that we have now come to a point where it's not about micromanaging everything. It’s about having the overview and thinking strategically, and the handover is going very smoothly because we have worked so much this year on not centralising everything but instead empowering our people to enable new team members to step up. I'm seeing a new generation of leaders step up, and I'm extremely proud of that. And of course, in my position, I'm responsible for ensuring people step up in the GLT, and we had amazing candidates this year. And that just means that we're doing something right, I think.’

Help us grow our impact!

We definitely dream big at Project Access and although it’s far too early to say what we might achieve, I took the opportunity to ask Ingrid what she imagines a Project Access of the future in, say, 10 years from now might look like.

In her humble vision: ‘we will have attracted the most talented team members in the world and become the best organisation to work and volunteer with. Project Access is the door that grants access to what comes next for each of the individuals who mentor, volunteer, and grow with us. ​​Let's also say we have helped and built up a network of 100,000 students.’

Want to help us unlock this door? If you are a school, university or company that is passionate about widening access to higher education, become a partner of Project Access. If you want to help mentees directly, you can donate a mentorship or apply to become one of our university mentors.

Thanks to all of those who have supported us in the last five years – here’s to our future impact!

Written by Hanna Tong Strömberg, 2nd year LLB Law at LSE.

Do you have any topics you would especially like to see covered on our blog? People you would like to meet? Places you want to see? Send your suggestions to hanna.stromberg@projectaccess.org ✉️