Teach for America: Wendy Kopp
In 1989, college senior Wendy Kopp was trying to figure out how to improve American public schools.
For her senior thesis, she proposed creating a national teaching corps that would recruit recent college grads to teach in underserved schools. One year later, she launched the nonprofit, Teach for America. Today, TFA has 50,000 alumni, a budget of nearly $300 million, and continues to place thousands of teachers across the country.