Meet Arman Jaffer, the technologist who earned a spot on Forbes’ prestigious 30 Under 30 2024 list for his innovative work at Brisk Teaching. Launching in 2023, this AI Chrome extension is changing the way teachers manage their workload. 700,000 educators worldwide already use Brisk Teaching for everything from creating lesson plans to creating quizzes to assisting with report cards.

Arman’s goal is simple: to help teachers spend less time on administrative tasks and more time engaging with students. “Something that would normally have taken maybe 20 minutes could be done in two minutes,” Jaffer explained when we sat down recently to talk about his career and his vision for Brisk Teaching.

Jaffer’s path to Brisk teaching is as impressive as it is unconventional. Before launching the platform, he worked on cutting-edge projects at Google, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and even in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer at the White House. However, it was his extensive experience in educational technology at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative that laid the foundation for Brisk.

“Teachers were unable to faithfully implement modern pedagogies,” he shared. As he watched teachers struggle to manage a deluge of disconnected tools and tabs—often 10 to 20 open at once—Jaffer recognized a deeper problem. “It’s almost like being an operator and not being in charge,” he noted.

Brisk Teaching was born from the idea of ​​solving this fragmentation. Unlike many edtech solutions that require educators to adopt entirely new systems, Brisk works where teachers already work – in their browser. The Chrome extension integrates with existing workflows, currently Google tools like Docs and Slide, and automates repetitive tasks. “Our goal was to meet teachers where they are, rather than burdening them with more work,” Jaffer explained.

Brisk Teaching offers features designed to make teachers’ everyday lives easier, from content creation to feedback generation. A standout feature is Inspect Writing, a tool that provides a detailed version history of student assignments. Unlike traditional AI plagiarism detectors – which Jaffer says can be unreliable – Inspect Writing offers transparency by showing how students shape their work over time. “It’s about holding students accountable for their own writing voice and ensuring they are productively engaged in improving themselves,” he said. This focus on transparency in enforcement reflects Brisk’s ethos: to use AI to support teachers and students without creating unnecessary friction.

As AI tools gain traction in education, data protection remains a pressing concern. Jaffer assured me that safety was the foundation of Brisk Teaching. “We do not send your data to OpenAI or Anthropic,” he emphasized. Instead, Brisk operates its own licensed language model, ensuring that student data remains in a secure and firewalled environment. In August 2023, the platform also achieved GDPR compliance, making it suitable for teachers in Europe.

Brisk isn’t just limited to providing teacher tools. The company recently expanded features for students that allow them to receive AI-driven feedback on assignments. “Teachers don’t want their students to wait a week for feedback,” Jaffer emphasized. With Brisk, students can complete their assignments in real time and gain insights that help them improve immediately.

And there’s more to come. Jaffer shared plans to deepen these features to enable students to collaborate on Google Docs while receiving real-time support. It’s a logical extension of Brisk’s mission: fostering stronger teacher-student interactions through streamlined workflows.

Investors including Owl Ventures and Springbank have invested $6.9 million in Jaffer’s San Francisco-based startup, positioning it to revolutionize education technology. Nevertheless, Jaffer’s perspective is refreshingly well-founded. “I’m an impatient person,” he admitted with a smile. “I wish we had developed more things in the last two years, but I am incredibly optimistic about the future.”