History

Here is a little bit about the company and leaders behind the ALX SE program.

What is ALG/ ALI / ALX

ALG, which stands for African Leadership Group, is an ecosystem consisting of African Leadership Academy (ALA), African Leadership University (ALU), Africa Leadership International (ALI) and African Leadership University School of Business (ALUSB).

The ALG's shared vision is to harness Africa's abundant human capital and transform the continent and the world by selecting, developing, and connecting 2 million young leaders to opportunities by 2030.

ALI is the legal entity that recently signed an agreement to acquire Silicon Valley-based Holberton Inc., a project-based, college alternative educating the next generation of software engineers.

ALI consists of ALX and The Room. ALX is the training arm of ALI that focuses on developing skills for the fourth industrial revolution such as software engineering, devops, and data science, among others. ALX SE is the software engineering program of ALX.

The Room is the talent placement arm, which is a community that young talent can join to access global work opportunities.

Find more information on both ALX and The Room on their respective websites

Mastercard Foundation

The Mastercard Foundation is a global foundation based in Canada that focuses on supporting education and financial inclusion in developing countries.

Our partnership with Mastercard Foundation allows us to offer eligible candidates access to world-class programme training at no cost. Each candidate has the opportunity to apply for a sponsored placement during the application process.

NB: Fred Swaniker (to the right), Julien Barbier (in the middle) and Guillaume Salva (to the left)

Fred Swaniker

Fred Swaniker is a serial entrepreneur and founder of the African Leadership Group. He is recognized as one of the most influential people in the world, and has been featured in Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in 2019.

Swaniker's passion for transforming Africa and empowering its people has driven him to establish an ecosystem of institutions with a shared vision to harness Africa's abundant human capital and transform the continent and the world.

His leadership has resulted in the creation of ALX and The Room, two brands of the African Leadership Group, which aim to develop skills for the fourth industrial revolution and provide young talent access to global work opportunities.

You can follow Fred on Social Media with the handles below:

Linkedin: Fred Swaniker
Twitter: @FredSwaniker

Julien Barbier

Julien Barbier joined ALX SE in September 2022 as Chief Product Officer. He is working with the entire team at ALX SE on creating the best software engineering program in the world and offering it to millions of people in Africa and beyond.

Before that, Julien was the CEO and founder of Holberton, a revolutionary new type of software engineering school that has no teachers, no lectures, and no upfront tuition. His innovative educational model is supported by tech leaders Jeff Weiner (Executive Chairman at LinkedIn), Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo!), and Solomon Hykes (founder of Docker), as well as R&B singer Ne-Yo and actor, producer, and social activist Priyanka Chopra.

Before that, Julien was the head of marketing and community at Docker, arguably one of the fastest-growing products for software developers over the last few years, now heavily used by companies such as Google, Uber, Spotify, Yelp, eBay, PayPal, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, etc… His innovative approach to communication and community has been one of the key factors that led the company from a $0 to a $1B+ valuation.

Julien is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best selling author and was recognized as one of the top United States’s CEOs in the Education Space in 2022. Julien has also been listed on Vanity Fair’s Future Innovator Index 2018 and was the winner of the EdTech Leadership Award 2017 for School Leader.

You can follow Julien on Social Media with the handles below:

Linkedin: Julien Barbier
Twitter: @julienbarbier42

Guillaume Salva

With an Engineering degree in Computer science option network, distributed systems and security, Guillaume started his career as iOS developer with iOS 3.0.

With 15 years of experience in the industry, Guillaume is the CTO of Holberton School, creator of the Checker and all other tools that he and his team developed for allowing learners to learn “the Holberton way”. Passionate about education and mainly to see a learner grow month after month. Always happy to help!

You can follow Guillaume on Social Media with the handles below:

Linkedin: Guillaume Salva
Twitter: @guillaumesalva