Company Name: Xenia Education
Founders: Jaydee Tarpeh & Nyasha Kapfumvuti
Tell us a little bit about yourself:
Jaydee Tarpeh is the founder and CEO of Xenia Education. He grew up during the civil war in Liberia. Went off to boarding school in a different country at the age of 15. He came to Canada as an international student in 2011.
During his time as a student, he was very involved on campus. He started my involvement as a Resident Assistant, started a club on campus, and then I got involved in student politics as a Board of Directors for the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance (UWSA). In 2015/2016, he was elected and served as the president of the UWSA.
During his term as president, his team implemented a few major projects. The greatest highlight of that year was having a successful referendum for the Universal Bus Pass. This gave students access to transit at a minimal cost and it gave the city access to over a million dollars of additional revenue to expand its transit offerings.
He worked in the education industry before launching Xenia. Being an international student in both his secondary and post-secondary stages, Jaydee developed a keen sense of how to make the experience of international education great. He founded Xenia to transform his experiences and knowledge into a packaged solution for other international students.
Nyasha Kapfumvuti is also a recent UWindsor graduate.He has a background in electrical & computer engineering and is an experienced instructional designer. He worked as amultimedia specialist at Hôtel-dieu Grace Healthcare before joining Xenia. As a cofounder of Xenia, Nyasha brings a blend of technical expertise and instructional design to the company.
Tell us about your company
Xenia Education creates immersive simulations that help international students develop critical non-academic skills in higher education, and uses data-driven technology to proactively match students in need with student support services.
Our products make the international student experience better using a suite of training simulation and analytics tools for students and their respective education institutions. We use an array of web, e-learning and instructional design technologies to develop our products. Students have access to simulated worlds that acclimatize them to post-secondary education institutions in North America long before they arrive for their first semester. These simulations are then used to match the student’s needs to the services provided by their institutions. The end result is a school-ready student and a student-ready institution.
How do you feel the RBC EPICentre Founders program will be beneficial to growing your company?
The RBC EPICentre Founders Program is an excellent incubator for us in our startup’s current phase. We have gone through our initial iteration of product development and market research with some success. The insight, mentorship and strategy refining processes that this program is now providing is going to be instrumental in how we refine our business strategies.
Why do you feel it’s important to have a company like yours in our community?
Windsor is a confluence of a lot of industries, and we see a need for our subset, education tech, fitting well in this ecosystem. Out of the box, some of the talent, research initiatives and institutional partners are readily available on both sides of the Canada – US border. We are anticipating that as we build and network, then we will begin to collaborate and synergize with other entities here.
Where do you hope to see yourself and your company by the end of this program?
We intend to roll out a beta version of our Guide by Xenia and open it up to several post secondary education institutions in North America and have our first group students and staff.
You can connect with us at guidebyxenia.com.