Alexandrine Brami: Lingopass, a Visionary and Transformative Educational Project

A graduate of ENS Paris-Saclay in Social Sciences (Class of 1998), Alexandrine Brami ventured to Brazil about twenty years ago. With no budget but deep conviction, grounded in the values instilled by the school, that education and culture are tools capable of transforming lives, she established several businesses that eventually led her to Lingopass, an Edtech company specializing in online language training that enables students and employees to learn languages quickly and tailored to their needs. Here's the profile of an entrepreneurial alumna with an unconventional journey.

"My journey isn't very linear," Alexandrine jests. "ENS gave me the opportunity to live and even value this non-linearity: envisioning possibilities, testing, making mistakes, correcting, starting over... this mental gymnastics we relentlessly practice without losing sight of our goals allowed me to earn my freedom, albeit at the cost of a lot, a lot of work."

After spending a year in Tahiti studying the cultural and identity renewal among Maohi youth, Alexandrine Brami embarked on a mission to Brazil from Sciences Po Paris to strengthen partnerships with the country's major universities. Despite not speaking a word of Portuguese, she had to quickly learn the language while focusing on her main task: preparing Brazilian youth from partner institutions for entrance exams.

Education, the Deadly Weapon for Transforming Lives 

Alexandrine devised a learning method for herself based on regular progression, discipline, rigor, and demands. "Since I had studied two difficult languages, Russian and Hebrew, I quickly learned Portuguese. My greatest victory was enabling my students to enter Sciences Po in six months, achieving a success rate of 30%. I also helped those who didn't make it to integrate into other institutions. That's how I got the idea of an intensive preparatory class for entrance exams, modeled after the French preparatory classes." Her calling was born, and she decided to stay in Brazil, convinced of renewing the ideal that had inspired Normalien teachers who came on missions in the 1930s to help establish the University of São Paulo. "I thought to myself: I've found my mission, to create the university of the future, grounded in today's world, 100% digital, aimed at reducing geographical boundaries and social disparities." Since 2007, Alexandrine Brami has been weaving her "work", with humility. "For us, Normaliens, success is a consequence, not a goal."

Collective Effort, in Bootstrap Mode 

From 2007, Alexandrine developed several projects, each marking a milestone on the path to creating Lingopass in 2021. With no knowledge of business, marketing, or management, she learned on her own, reading extensively and seeking advice from corporate leaders who willingly acted as mentors to the young alumna. Recruitment, vision, strategy—she didn't hesitate to seek their advice on all fronts. "Launching a startup in Brazil at the time was not glamorous at all," she recalls. Any idea from external sources was assimilated and then fed into the strategy of each project. But she likes to repeat that her secret weapon is the collective effort. "My entire entrepreneurial journey was built collectively, by partnering with people with the best skills in all areas, different from me, both more empathetic, capable of creating spontaneous connections, and more organized, able to plan and execute." With no capital, everything was done in "bootstrap" mode[1] . "We constantly adjusted, corrected, adapted... We had to do everything," Alexandrine recalls. "But we never lost money. Everything we earned was systematically reinvested to innovate."

As early as 2008, the young woman had the intuition of the growing digitalization of education and built her first distance learning digital platform. "At first, our students were reluctant, so we had to force them by conditioning certificate issuance on completing a minimum number of online exercises," she recounts. "We quickly discovered that those who spent the most time on the platform achieved much better results than others." To survive in a harsh Brazilian business ecosystem, she anticipated the worst, and it came, first in 2009 in the form of an economic crisis, and then in 2020 with the health crisis. "I gathered my teams and told them we had six months to pivot from a model of one-time sales to individuals (B2C) to a recurring sales model for companies (B2B). We mobilized like an army to develop an All-In-One training solution, fully integrated and tailored to HR needs."

Lingopass, a Revolutionary Platform 

The startup goes beyond simple product sales by offering innovative solutions. By collecting and analyzing a large amount of data through artificial intelligence, it provides advanced and real-time personalization of learning paths, uses predictive analysis to increase engagement and prevent dropout, and supports companies in identifying and recruiting the most talented individuals capable of rapid learning. The transformation project led by the startup is simultaneously human, social, and political. "Education," says Alexandrine, "is the most powerful soft power tool for sharing a vision of the world and values, such as those characterizing our French culture, combining tradition and modernity, excellence and innovation, openness and diversity."

Where does Alexandrine Brami draw her inspiration and energy? "ENS transformed my curiosity, a vice, into a virtue," she replies with a smile. Before the age of 30, she spent entire days at the library. "I'm often described as a visionary, but I'm simply hyperactive and hyperconnected, which allows me to pick up on weak market signals and anticipate trends." The typical humility of Normaliens has also influenced her. "Diligent, we always want to do better and go further," asserts the young entrepreneur, ready to become a mentor herself to advise and support future entrepreneurs. "I would like to welcome engaged Normaliens to Brazil or work remotely with them for education. Researchers or students, trained in statistics, data science, or artificial intelligence, they will discover a fantastic laboratory for experimentation and help the project grow rapidly, intelligently, with ethics and humility." Are you ready for the adventure?

[1] Bootstrap refers to creating a company without relying on external investors.