About

After teaching English online for EdTech startup, VIPKid, I was offered a position in 2016 in Beijing, China working in the VIPKid head office. I worked for VIPKid for almost 5 years. I began as an Instructional Designer creating learning resources for online English teachers based in the US and Canada. When I left in April of 2021, I was managing a team of five people and responsible for all of the learning resources created for teachers. Throughout this time, I saw massive changes in the company both in terms of scale and also in how work was done. When I started at VIPKid, there were 5000 teachers, when I left, there were over 100,000. The first learning resources I made were delivered by Google Slides. By the time I left, we had an internal CMS, over 40 different certifications, hundreds of learning resources, and a portal with a learning path for teachers to access learning resources. I was involved in and provided feedback for all of the processes for product development, and I oversaw and participated in all of the learning resources development. I left VIPKid due to the uncertainty of how new upcoming government policies would impact the EdTech sector in China. Ultimately, those policies essentially decimated the entire English tutoring business in China.

Zachary de Vries

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