One of the co-founders and the President of Escuelab, Cristina Balbas, has always loved both science and communication, and already in high school she knew that her ideal job would combine both disciplines.
Escuelab is a social project that democratizes access to practical and interactive scientific education, encourages research careers, and dispels stereotypes about scientists among Spanish students.
Cristina had the concept while studying for her doctorate. She became interested in outreach initiatives while pursuing her PhD at the Spanish National Cancer Institute. She quickly learned that many schools were left out of those activities due to a lack of spots available for everyone who wanted to participate. This, combined with the fact that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) degrees were chosen by 5% fewer students in Spain between 2003 and 2012 (Eurostat, 2013), prompted her to consider measures to close the gap.
After thinking of the idea, Cristina put together a team of people with experience in science, education, and social entrepreneurship. She shares, “Together, we spent a couple of years looking at the underlying causes of this lack of interest in STEM. We also studied market opportunities and talked to stakeholders, piloting a few workshops in different contexts. Once we were certain there was a need we could meet and we had packaged our methodology into different lines of business, we were confident Escuelab could succeed and officially launched it.”
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Cristina Balbas and the World’s Leaders:
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader. Tell us about your background and what you did before you started/joined the Escuelab.
Originally from Burgos, Spain, I opened my eyes to the world in 2006, when I was awarded a scholarship to study for the last two years of high school at the United World College of Hong Kong. I have always been equally passionate about science and communication. I knew my ideal job would combine both disciplines. However, I believed that in order to become a good science communicator, I needed to experience high-level research first hand. I majored in Molecular Biology at Princeton University and, after graduation; I felt my exposure to research was still limited. I was interested in biomedicine, so I decided to start a PhD at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center. During my graduate studies, I also took courses on Science Journalism and Communication and participated in a range of public outreach activities.
How do you diversify your company’s cutting-edge services/solutions for people, entrepreneurs, and business leaders?
Escuelab (“Schoolab”) is a social project that democratizes access to practical, interactive science education, fostering research vocations and developing skills for the future amongst Spanish 4- to 14-year-olds. We produce educational materials and implement them in our non-formal education programs. Both our methodology and business model are special. We have designed a unique methodology based on neuro-education research, and we apply it to our workshops, extracurricular science clubs, and holiday day and residential science camps. Our prizing policies are adjusted to the socio-economic level of attending students, and we have devised a scholarship scheme so that students at risk of socio-economic vulnerability can attend our programs free of charge.
As a Founder of Escuelab, what are your major roles and responsibilities?
As a co-founder of Escuelab, I recruited founding members and coordinated the launch of the venture. I currently coordinate team members,. I oversee the development of educational materials and their implementation. I recruit and train new facilitators and team members as required by the development of the needs of the venture. I also coordinate communications with current and potential customers. I participate in strategic decisions and control adherence to budget and performance goals. Moreover, I represent the project in different spheres to make it known and look for synergies with other entities.
What are the three things you would like to see improved in the organization?
We are at a point where we have almost finished the consolidation of our activities. This means that we need to start significantly growing soon. As we mainly provide services, we need to learn the best strategies to achieve that growth without losing our essence or delivering services of lesser quality. We are currently considering different strategies that range from social franchising to opening headquarters in other cities/countries, and even piloting some of them to find out what the right fit is for us to ensure economic sustainability while maximizing impact.
In parallel, we also need to establish long-term relationships with research institutions to properly and scientifically track our long-term impact.
In summary, we need to find the right scaling model that ensures both financial sustainability of the project and high quality delivery, resulting in the desired kind of impact on our beneficiaries.
Have you been exposed to competition in the industry? If so, tell us what makes the company different from its competitors?
To our knowledge, no other venture offers high-quality, field-tested materials for educators to teach STEM in Spanish with an inquiry-based methodology like us.
Elesapiens (elesapiens.com) is a venture that offers a methodology to teach STEM based on online materials, and aligned with the curriculum, but it doesn’t have a practical, experimental focus. In their approach, students are passive receptors of information, whereas we train teachers and provide them with access to resources that allow them to easily implement hands-on scientific activities in a classroom setting, using daily materials obtained at a very reduced cost.
More than 18,000 students who have experienced our activities in person have benefited from our methodology and resources.
Tell us about your vision for the company. How do you ensure a culture of integrity and innovation in the company?
Our latest innovation is the Escuelab platform, which gives easy access to online materials that are the digitalized version of our proven methodology to teach inquiry-based science in primary school.
The innovation here relies on giving teachers access to our high quality, field-tested learning materials. These are very easy to implement in the classroom, since they include lesson plans, student worksheets, experiment videos, step-by-step instructions, and suggestions for additional activities, testing, etc. They require easy-to-obtain, affordable materials. Overall, it takes teachers as much time and effort to implement our inquiry-based methodology as it does to teach a “regular” class.
We are not aware of the existence of other online teacher-training platforms or lesson-plan repositories offering this type of tested content.
Moreover, our platform has also been proven useful in supporting teachers in ensuring pedagogical continuity of STEM learning with pupils studying online from home or maintaining social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We envision using this platform as a means to reach all Spanish-speaking children in the world, ensuring they get access to a high-quality STEM education regardless of their socio-economic background.
What’s the greatest risk you’ve taken as a professional?
The founding of Escuelab, when I was finishing my PhD with very good publications and the prospects of starting a successful research career, but instead I decided to give the project a shot and devote 1 year to working full time on it. The risk was worth it and, 8 years later, the business is still up, running and growing in size and impact despite the pandemic.
How do you balance work and life responsibilities?
I must admit, being the founder of a still developing business means the balance tips more often than not towards work. However, I try to schedule off time to exercise and be with my family, and friends, and I make it a point to take at least two full weeks off in August (our “low” season).
What advice would you give to emerging entrepreneurs and enthusiasts considering a career in an industry?
I would advise them to identify their weak points and surround themselves with team members who are stronger than them in those areas. I would also tell them to keep their eyes and ears open and are willing to constantly learn from other people and projects.
