2025 Year in Review: Inclusion and Belonging at Clever

At Clever, our mission to connect every student to a world of learning is only as strong as the people who power it. This year, our People strategy was grounded in one core principle: building a high performing team where everyone can grow and thrive.

This is our annual commitment to accountability—a look at the progress we’ve made, the areas where we’ve seen impact, and the work that remains.

Data-Driven Momentum: Our Highest Representation to Date

Our journey to build a more inclusive workforce is reflected in our demographics. We’re proud to report that overall representation across groups is the highest it has ever been in Clever’s history.

• Gender representation in technical roles is at an all-time high.
• Representation of Black and Latinx employees is also at the highest point we have achieved.

While our overall demographic representation remained largely flat year-over-year, we view this stabilization as an opportunity to double down on intentional representation. This directional progress is a testament to the continuous evolution of our recruiting and people processes, which are designed to mitigate bias and create truly equitable access and opportunity for all.

Diversity Report 2025

See Clever’s employee demographics for the year 2025.

See the full 2025 report

Investing in Belonging and Retention

Building on our demographic representation, this year’s focus moved strategically to cultivating retention through deeply embedding inclusion and belonging into the employee lifecycle. Retention is driven by engaged, well-supported, and high-performing teams.

Sustaining Momentum through Continuous Improvement

We are committed to building an inclusive employee experience that supports retention, development, and high performance across all teams. Our work in 2025 focused on ensuring that every Cleverite has clear expectations, equitable access to growth, and feels genuinely seen for their contributions.

• Equitable Growth Pathways: We rolled out clear, unique Level Competencies for every role and function, tied to overall business objectives to ensure employees are clear on what success looks like for their role.
• Targeted Manager Support: We matured our People Team function by moving to an embedded HR Business Partner model. This ensures managers have a dedicated, expert resource to address complex team dynamics, drive engagement, and empower them to become better, more consistent leaders.
• Meaningful Recognition: We enhanced the Clever Catalyst Awards, our peer-driven, values-based recognition program. With over 100 annual nominations, the program is designed for inclusive participation, ensuring every employee is eligible to nominate or be recognized for their impact and commitment to our core tenets.

Attracting Aligned Talent: This year, we formally launched our Employee Value Proposition (EVP). This clearly defines what employees can expect internally and serves to attract talent who are naturally aligned with our values, fostering stronger psychological safety and belonging.

The Path Forward: Scaling Inclusion Across a Global Team

With a strong foundation in place, our next chapter is focused on scaling inclusion across our growing, global organization. Our 2026 priorities are framed as forward-looking ambitions to elevate our culture and ensure every employee, everywhere, can thrive.

Our 2026 priorities are:

• Elevating Consistent Feedback and Accountability: We will dedicate resources to ensuring consistent, equitable, and documented feedback across the company. This is about making us all better at challenging each other with candor and care, and ensuring every employee has measurable business goals tied to overall business objectives.
• Deepening Global Culture: As a global, remote-first company, we will deepen our focus on what it means to be an effective asynchronous culture. We’ll work to build psychological safety, promote cultural competency across all geographies, and ensure that every employee—especially our international teams—feels deeply connected and supported.
• AI for Good: We are committed to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool for good across our organization, with a core focus on ensuring fairness and mitigating bias in our people processes.

The work of building an equitable organization is a continuous commitment to refinement. This year, we achieved record representation and invested in an inclusive employee experience that supports retention and development.

Ultimately, our commitment to equitable people processes is a direct investment in our mission. A stronger, more intentional Clever means more equitable access to learning for every student. We look forward to continuing this work and reporting back on our progress.