Carrol Chang, who previously held a senior leadership role at Uber as global head of Driver and Courier Operations, will also join Andela’s Board of Directors. 

She succeeds Jeremy Johnson, the co-founder of Andela, who will continue to serve on the board but steps down as CEO.

Chang’s appointment comes at an important moment for Andela, a company that started as an innovative African startup and has grown into a billion-dollar unicorn. 

Known for her ability to scale businesses, particularly during times of rapid growth, Carrol Chang is seen as the right leader to guide Andela into its next phase.

Her experience in expanding Uber’s driver network to nearly seven million individuals across 70 countries reveals her capability to manage large-scale operations and thrive in complex global markets.

Speaking about her new role, Chang said, “It is an honour to lead a mission-driven company like Andela. The opportunity to shape the future of the global talent market, valued at $8.5 trillion, is both exciting and challenging. I am eager to continue Andela’s mission of connecting top-tier talent with global opportunities.”

Chang’s leadership experience spans beyond Uber, with roles at McKinsey & Company, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and various international organisations focused on education and economic development. 

Her mixed background is expected to bring fresh perspectives to Andela as it continues to refine its business model and expand its global footprint.

Jeremy Johnson, reflecting on his decade-long journey with Andela, is positive about Chang’s ability to lead the company forward. He noted, “The digital transformation of global hiring is just beginning, and Carrol is the perfect leader to drive Andela’s next chapter. Her strategic vision and deep understanding of marketplace dynamics will be crucial as we work towards becoming the world’s most trusted talent marketplace.”

Founded in 2014, Andela has trained over 110,000 technologists from more than 135 countries, greatly contributing to job creation and career development globally. 

With Chang, Andela aims to continue its mission of bridging the gap between skilled professionals and global employers, strengthening its place in grooming leaders across the global talent marketplace.

These events are taking place in key global locations including the US, UK, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Egypt, Brazil, and Pakistan, attracting over 550 key stakeholders. 

Participants include Andela’s six visionary founders, as well as former and current employees, talent, investors, clients, and industry players, highlighting a decade of the company’s significant influence on Africa’s tech landscape and its growing global impact.

Founded in Lagos, Nigeria in 2014 by Jeremy Johnson, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Nadayar Enegesi, Brice Nkengsa, Ian Carnevale, and Christina Sass, Andela was built on the belief that ‘brilliance is equally distributed, but opportunity is not’. 

This guiding principle has propelled Andela to the forefront of matching exceptional technologists from traditionally overlooked regions like Africa and Latin America with companies seeking to bolster capacity and skill sets. 

After successfully trialling a remote-first model in Ghana and Egypt, Andela fully adopted this approach in 2020, transitioning into a global, remote-first talent marketplace that now spans over 135 countries.

Watch Andela’s 10 years of Impact Video

Over the past decade, the company has achieved remarkable milestones, including:

• Assembled one of the world’s largest tech communities with over 5 million members
• Andela has a 98% client satisfaction rate with their quality talent
• 110,000 technologists have been trained through Andela’s programs, exceeding the original 10-year goal of 100,000 
• 15% of Africa’s estimated 716,000 engineers were skilled through Andela 
• Andela’s talent marketplace in Africa spans 49 countries
• Andela’s talent pool in Africa has grown 179% a year on average for the past 10 years 
• Since January 2020, technical talent from Nigeria has grown 791%, from Kenya has grown 451%, and from Ghana has grown 955%

“Building a great company is fundamentally an exercise in hiring great people. At Andela, I have been unbelievably blessed to work with extraordinary humans on this now decade-long journey,” shares Jeremy Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO at Andela.

“Bringing people together and fostering a sense of community in our marketplace has been part of our secret sauce. As we look to the future, Andela will continue to show why we are the most trusted tech talent marketplace for enterprises. Our customers will continue to experience the world as a hiring pool, and technology will continue to enable us to extend that reach.”

Backed by prominent investors such as Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Softbank, Google Ventures, Serena Ventures, and Generation Investment Management, Andela is the first talent marketplace to become a unicorn company and one of the seven unicorn companies founded in Africa. 

Andela is adeptly responding to the accelerating digital transformation and the insatiable demand for tech talent driven by generative AI. 

Through its rigorously qualified global marketplace of skilled technologists, Andela’s adaptive hiring model has emerged as a future-proof solution, empowering businesses such as MasterCard, GitHub, and Tawi Fesh to rapidly scale world-class teams on demand to meet their evolving needs. 

By tapping into 60% of Andela’s qualified tech talent pool from largely untapped markets like Africa and LATAM, these businesses gain access to cost-efficient tech expertise and diversity of thought, while also benefiting from hiring speeds up to 70% faster than traditional recruiting methods.

“Celebrating our 10-year milestone with hundreds of industry players across the world, including former Andelans, is a testament to the strong community we have built and the leaders we have nurtured who are making significant impacts in the tech space across Africa and globally,” says Mike Ndimurukundo, Managing Director of Andela Rwanda. 

“As pioneers in building a distributed workforce, our success is proof that opportunities can be effectively distributed, enabling technologists from Africa or anywhere in the world, to drive innovation. The journey doesn’t end here; together, we will continue to push boundaries and redefine the future of work.”

As Andela enters its second decade, the company remains committed to advancing the borderless future of work now embraced by 58% of companies. 

Moving forward, Andela plans to train more world-class technologists, further enhance its AI-powered platform, and drive transformative impact with partners across various sectors, including climate tech and healthcare. 

This strategy highlights Andela’s role as a key player in leveraging technology to tackle some of the world’s critical challenges.

With an emphasis on transparency, efficiency, and informed decision-making, Andela’s AI-driven solution, the Andela Talent Cloud, provides IT executives with comprehensive insights into talent profiles and skills assessment results.

Andela CEO and Co-Founder, Jeremy Johnson, highlighted the strategic importance of global, remote tech talent, stating, “Leading organizations recognize the competitive edge offered by integrating global tech talent into their workforce strategies. Andela’s approach is seamless, combining the premier private talent marketplace with AI-driven capabilities to help companies scale their teams and accelerate project deliveries.”

The Andela Talent Cloud offers unparalleled benefits such as speed, flexibility, performance, and trust, distinguishing it from traditional hiring methods like in-house recruiting and outsourcing. By leveraging a highly elastic resource pool and flexible hiring options, IT organizations can swiftly find the ideal talent for specific roles, ensuring a perfect match in terms of skills, speed, and cost. 

The platform simplifies the entire hiring lifecycle, enabling companies to source, qualify, hire, manage, and pay global technologists seamlessly. Remarkably, this process can be completed in as little as 48 hours, making it 30% to 50% more cost-efficient.

Ikechi Okoronkwo, Global Executive Director, Advanced Analytics at Mindshare, emphasized the importance of Andela in their global talent strategy. “Andela allows us to scale our workforce based on our business needs. They provide us with highly motivated and skilled talent, ensuring maximum value for our clients. Andela de-risks global hiring, empowering businesses to grow and stay competitive.”

At the heart of the Andela Talent Cloud lies the Talent Decision Engine (TDE), powered by AI and data-driven matching algorithms. This engine assesses thousands of data points, including hard and soft skills, experience, geography, language proficiency, and client feedback, to ensure accurate talent-to-job matching. Reducing bias and subjectivity, the TDE creates fairer and more precise matches, enhancing the success rate of talent placements.

Andela’s acquisition of Qualified in March 2023 has enabled the integration of developer assessment capabilities into the Talent Decision Engine. This addition ensures a thorough evaluation of the recommended talent’s on-the-job performance. The platform offers over 500 predefined coding challenges, providing objective assessments of technical skills at scale.

To facilitate seamless payments, Andela Pay manages global payouts, currency exchange, and compliance in over 100 countries. Technologists are paid directly in USD into their preferred wallets, minimizing foreign exchange risks for clients. The platform also conducts necessary compliance checks, ensuring all remote workers adhere to applicable regulations.

Additionally, Andela Connect offers integrations with popular Application Tracking Systems (ATS) and Vendor Management Systems (VMS) like Greenhouse, Beeline, and Fieldglass. These integrations streamline the recruitment process, allowing clients to quickly source talent recommendations from the Andela Talent Marketplace.

With the launch of the Andela Talent Cloud, Andela is focused on reshaping the ecosystem of global tech hiring, providing businesses with a reliable, efficient, and forward-looking solution to meet their talent needs.