Jessica Chang

Company: Upwards
Title: Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer
Industry: Education
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Notable in 2023: Partnered with Amazon and the U.S. Army to provide child-care benefits.

The child-care crisis in America existed before Covid, and it only got worse after, with the shuttering of so many local facilities. Too few spaces available, too expensive for too many families to make careers financially viable, and too many workers being paid low wages leading to labor market churn.

Jessica Chang, a longtime early childhood education advocate and preschool owner in Los Angeles,  founded Upwards in 2017, a digital child-care company that works to expand access through partnerships with major U.S. employers and government entities.

A mother of two, Chang founded Upwards – formerly known as WeeCare – to help providers run a successful child-care business and to provide a means to match employers, families and child-care providers in what has long been an inefficient marketplace.

Many employer-sponsored child-care benefits have historically only been available to a small percentage of employees.

According to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation study, 58% of working parents said the inability to find child care led them to leave jobs, while 32% of women said the need to care for children at home was a barrier to staying in the labor market.

For employers, it's ultimately a worker productivity and retention issue.

Upwards has partnered with over 520 companies and employers from Amazon to Chobani, Dollywood, P. F. Chang's, Panasonic and Wendy's, as well as with the U.S. Army and several states and cities: California, North Carolina and Virginia, and Los Angeles, among them.

In September 2023, Amazon announced that it would begin to offer small business owners in its Delivery Service Partner program access to Upwards services. In August 2023, the Army began a child-care pilot program for Army Reserve soldiers and their families through Upwards. 

The company's mobile app allows users to find, visit and enroll with local, licensed providers. And it says that its algorithm – which provides real-time child-care availability – can reduce the time it takes to find a placement match for families and providers by 90%. Upwards says it reaches roughly three million families across all 50 states.

In February, it raised a series B round of $21 million, roughly doubling its venture funding to date.

"While billions in public and private funds flow towards child care annually, hundreds of millions of families still struggle to find quality, affordable care and participate in the workforce, highlighting clear gaps in the system," Change said in a release announcing the investor deal.