TeamworkNation is a nonprofit platform empowering youth to grow as leaders, collaborators, and lifelong learners through team-based challenges rooted in creativity, purpose, and community.

Founded by Becky Chu — a Silicon Valley technology leader with experience at Yahoo, Lockheed Martin, WalmartLabs, and as former CTO of a tech startup focused on intellectual property and applied AI — TeamworkNation began with a deeply personal question:

Inspired by her children's experience on a Destination Imagination team called "One Spot, Two Spot, Red Spot, Blue Spot," Becky saw that the same team dynamics she'd led in Silicon Valley — brainstorming under pressure, role negotiation, handling failure — were already present among third graders. These weren't soft skills, they were survival skills. And yet in the workforce, companies rely on 10+ rounds of interviews to evaluate something that test scores can't measure. The straight-A student or Ivy League grad isn't always the best teammate. If we wait until adulthood to teach real collaboration, we've waited too long.

That realization led to the creation of On-the-Spot Challenges — original, fast-paced, team-based activities drawing from STEAM competitions, business simulations, civic engagement, and research storytelling. These challenges help students build leadership, think across disciplines, and solve real-world problems within a team, using everyday materials and emerging technologies - fundamental components that AI cannot replace.

That same team, now high schoolers, remains at the heart of TeamworkNation, helping lead a growing network of students across age groups. At the core of the platform is its Youth Advisory Board and AI Innovation Lab: a student-driven program where middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students analyze team-based learning models and use AI to co-create new curriculum. Students serve not just as participants, but as researchers, creators, and architects of the program itself.

Grassroots partnerships with schools and local communities have already demonstrated the impact of this model in real classrooms. We're excited to build on this momentum, not just to scale what works, but to co-create a modern vision for education with like-minded partners.

At TeamworkNation, students don't just prepare for the future — they help build it.