The EnGen story begins and grows from the passion of Founder and Chief Education Officer Katie Brown (Nielson), Ph.D.

Twenty-five years ago on an apple orchard in rural Virginia, Katie was, at the time, a volunteer undergraduate student tasked with teaching English to migrant workers. During this experience, she realized two things very quickly: one, she had no idea what she was doing; and two, relying on well-meaning volunteers is an inefficient (and ineffective) way of empowering speakers of other languages with English skills.

It struck her then that there had to be a better way, and she started the work of figuring out what that was.

Katie spent several years teaching English in the U.S. and abroad, working with thousands of language learners over the years. After that, she spent ten years working in higher education, earning a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and researching every single commercially available language learning product on the market. Much like what happened on that apple orchard, she was struck by ineffective tools that were not based on research and didn’t actually deliver outcomes. So she decided to develop a platform that would actually work

She spent seven years working at Voxy, Inc., where, as the chief education officer, she was able to design language learning software that delivered exceptional learning outcomes at scale. She authored ten patents on the personalized, mobile-first technology that would solve those problems found on the apple orchard and in language classrooms around the world. Then she collected the data to show that it did! After building and validating the technology, it was time to get back to serving the needs of the New Americans who need it the most, which is when she founded EnGen.

EnGen is a public benefit company with the mission to remove English as a barrier for the next generation of New Americans. We are determined to solve the problem that Katie first encountered on that apple orchard, by leveraging technology to reach the millions of immigrants, refugees, and speakers of other languages who are unemployed and underemployed - because they don’t have English skills.

When coming up with a name for the company, the team wanted to ensure that it captured their mission.

EnGen’s Mission:
To empower New Americans with the English skills they need to achieve their goals.

EnGen engages and enables a new generation of immigrants, refugees, and speakers of other languages with the resources to get jobs with family-sustaining wages.

The name EnGen also plays on the idea of an “engine”— the secret to solving this problem at scale.

Every teacher knows that the best way to reach learners is through relevant, contextual learning content that is interesting to them. The problem is that personalizing that content is outside the scope of a single human, and that’s where EnGen (and our engine) come in. Our patented content delivery engine gets every single language learner the most relevant, up-to-date content, at the right time, and at the right level. To put this into context, employees at Walmart are getting the English lessons they need to understand customer requests whereas employees at Chobani are getting the English lessons they need to understand food safety. And they are all getting the language skills they need to accomplish their real-world goals, whether those are to apply for citizenship, get a high school equivalency, or help their kids with their homework.

EnGen’s mobile-first platform is designed for New Americans, regardless of starting proficiency level, formal educational background, or language learning goals. And what makes us special is that we tailor every implementation to the unique needs of the employer, community organization, or institution so that we can deliver the outcomes that matter the most. Our data-driven approach to both product development and customer success mean that we know how to help learners and we have the language learning engine to ensure that they succeed.