Our Story

The Foundry of today began on the streets of Milwaukee! It grew out of a desire to engage disenfranchised youth in learning and taking agency over their futures. In the mid-1990’s, a new non-profit called Homeboyz Interactive created a learner-centered, project-based apprenticeship program that became extraordinarily successful in teaching young people to code and build websites. Their coding success created the need for a tracking solution to manage their projects. The students and teachers collaborated on a solution…and Foundry was born! Over time, the lives of many of these young people were transformed. Many are leaders in the Milwaukee community today. 

In the mid-2000s, the Foundry platform was developed as a solution to plan, assess, and track project-based learning. Foundry grew into a comprehensive platform for managing the workflow of personalized, learner-centered, inquiry-based learning for students K-16 and for the professional learning of educators.

Today, Foundry is an international network of schools, students and educators transforming teaching and learning. The Foundry Team is deeply committed to the transformation of education through the creation of exceptional learning tools and ecosystems.  We strive to be the change we hope to see in the world. 

Foundry Mission

Why we exist.

We live in a world of complex, messy problems. The quality of our future – perhaps our very survival – depends on solving them.

Today’s learners and teachers will be the agents of this transformation…as powerful critical thinkers, problem solvers, collaborators, and creators.

They require exceptional tools to revolutionize their work.

What we do.

Foundry builds exceptional tools and ecosystems that catalyze transformational learning and teaching.

How we do it.

We are deeply committed to integrity in design, implementation, and relationships with our customers and their transformational work.