Summary
Gilbert Jolly is a tech-focused CEO and former hands-on CTO with 11 years of experience building full-stack and mobile products across the UK, US and Africa. He leads Jolly Learning’s digital transformation, turning a globally used print phonics programme into widely adopted edtech that reaches millions and is increasingly used in classrooms. Previously he built and scaled consumer and education apps—such as the Jolly Phonics apps and Jolly Classroom—with thousands of daily active users and developed large-scale school monitoring systems used across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Gilbert combines deep technical chops from an early iOS/mobile engineering career with product leadership and operational experience running companies, and he directs Jolly Futures, a philanthropic literacy initiative that has trained over 250,000 teachers. Notably, his work bridges commercial product development and large government/NGO partnerships, delivering measurable literacy impact at national scale.
11 years of coding experience
11 years of employment as a software developer
Chigwell School
Computer Science, Computing, 2:1, Computer Science, Computing, 2:1 at University of Plymouth