Dieumerci Christel did not set out to build an education company. He set out to solve a problem he lived.
Christel grew up in Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in western Tanzania. His parents fled the Democratic Republic of Congo after his father, a human rights activist, was targeted and lost his first wife to militia violence.
Christel was born in the camp and spent his childhood between cultures, languages and countries that did not claim him.
“I grew up not being understood. I grew up not belonging anywhere,” he told TBBW. “Being born in a refugee camp, I am basically a child of no nation.”
Congo did not recognize him because he was not born there. Tanzania did not recognize him because he was only there as a refugee.
He says that if the United Nations held a soccer match, he would be on the international team because no country has ever fully accepted him.
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The camp became his world. His parents arrived with almost nothing. He remembers crowded tents, long food lines and classrooms made by hand because no formal school existed.
His father and other refugees cleared land, cut trees and built benches so children could learn outside.
When it rained, school stopped. When UNICEF saw the effort, they brought chalkboards and plastic sheeting so kids could keep learning.
It shaped how Christel saw education. It felt fragile and community-built, but also powerful when adults tried to protect it.
He also saw tension inside the classroom. Many of his teachers came from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.
Some of those same countries had been in conflict with Congo. As a child, he sat in lessons taught by people from groups that had historically been at war with his own.
He said that made school feel complicated. He wanted to trust them, but he was also living with the knowledge of what his family had fled. Even with the conflict, he saw those teachers try to reach kids who carried trauma.
The resettlement process took 13 years. It meant constant interviews and medical checks. By the time his family was approved to come to the United States, he understood something most 13-year-olds never face. Life can change through survival, not opportunity.
His family arrived in the United States when he was 13. He spoke five languages, but not English.
He first lived in Colorado and then moved to North Dakota. The classrooms there felt familiar in an unexpected way.
Many teachers were white and had limited cultural overlap with students who came from places like Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Mexico and Ecuador.
Christel recognized the same challenge he saw in the camp. Teachers cared, but they did not always have the time or structure to understand who was sitting in front of them.
“When I came here, I just felt like the education system did not really understand how to engage students,” he said. “Students grew up with TikTok and everything being personalized to us, but school was one of the most impersonal things you could experience.”
He saw the national picture too. Students were showing up less often. About 16 million students miss more than ten days of school each year.
Schools lose nearly $16 billion because of that. He believes the real cause is not academics. It’s belonging. Kids do not show up when they do not feel connected.
Mental health challenges also grew after the pandemic. Teens feel more isolated and anxious than before. Schools spend nearly $40 billion on social and emotional learning, yet students still feel unseen.
That disconnect stayed with him. So did the teachers who changed his life.
The teachers who shaped him
Christel talks about two teachers who saw him before he saw himself.
One was Mrs. Carolyn Klimper of Fort Morgan Middle School in Colorado. She taught him English in a year. She pushed him to write a speech and deliver it to about 200 people when he was 13.
Her husband drove him to the event, bought him his first Happy Meal and encouraged him before he stepped onstage. Christel remembers reading the speech while shaking. He finished to a standing ovation.
“She unlocked something that day,” he said. She died in 2018, but he still calls her the teacher who changed the course of his life.
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Another teacher pushed him again in high school. He told her he was afraid to pitch an early version of his idea at a 1 Million Cups event. She made him a deal. If he gave the speech, she would replace his physics final.
He chose the speech.
That moment kicked off his entrepreneurship journey. The room stood up for him. Adults told him they had struggled in school, too.
“That moment told me the problem I lived through was real,” he said. Those teachers pushed him toward this work.
Building Enlightapp
Christel started working on Enlightapp as a high school student. His first idea was simple. He wanted to build an algorithm that helped students find personalized content online.
After talking to about 80 teachers, he realized the bigger problem was that teachers did not have enough time or tools to get to know their students.
Teachers started sending him their first-week-of-school surveys. He turned the answers into readable profiles. They paid him for it.
He launched the early software version while at North Dakota State University. He refined it through pitch competitions, fellowships and pilot programs. The platform grew from simple profiles to ongoing weekly insights.
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Today, Enlightapp lets students and teachers build profiles that show how students learn, what they care about and how confident they feel in each class.
Teachers build their own profiles first so students can see them as people. Students then share their learning preferences, interests and the grade they expect to earn.
Christel says this helps teachers understand confidence levels and mindsets from the start.
The tool also collects class trends so teachers can see patterns across groups of students.
Each month, Enlightapp creates “stories” about what is changing in the classroom. Christel describes it as “Spotify Wrapped for teachers.”
These stories help teachers see new interests, concerns and opportunities to connect. The platform can also flag early concerns, such as hunger or safety issues, in line with school-approved policies.
Schools choose whether the data is anonymous or identifiable. Enlightapp complies with FERPA and adjusts privacy settings to meet district requirements.
The company has seen what happens when students feel safe enough to share.
Christel often shows schools the actual responses students write. Many describe hunger, stress, family issues and the ways they cope.
Others write about motivation, friendships and what they need from adults. He says the biggest surprise is how self-aware students are.
“They already are,” he said. “They know themselves better than people think.”
One school found that 35% of its students were into cars and created a weekly car club. Attendance went up on those days. Another school in Brooklyn started a gardening club in response to student interest.
A growing footprint
Enlightapp is in five partner schools and is working with researchers to validate its impact.
More than 5,000 teachers are on the waitlist, representing nearly 200,000 students. The platform expects to reach 40,000 to 50,000 students next year.
Christel says this year was about learning.
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“We had a little snag where teachers said they wanted more data throughout the year,” he said. “Now we are figuring out how to replicate that in more schools.”
The company is based in Land O’ Lakes and is part of the Tampa Bay Wave founder community.
What he hopes to change
Christel wants students to feel known. He wants teachers to feel connected. He believes attendance, trust and engagement grow when kids believe they belong.
He often quotes a line from Rumi: Beyond good and evil, there is a field. He hopes classrooms can feel like that field.
“Idealistically, I hope it helps people realize how similar we are,” he said. “The more we learn about each other, the better relationships we build.”
He believes teachers will stay in the profession longer if they feel a real connection to their students.
“Teachers do not go in to make money,” he said. “They go in because they want to make an impact.”
For him, Enlightapp is a way to return the gift his teachers gave him.
“When my teachers see me on these lists and send messages, that is what they were working for,” he said. “They want to be able to tell the next class, I had a student who did this.”
His path began with teachers who made space for him. Enlightapp is his effort to scale that experience nationwide.
“If we could help more students feel like they belong,” he said, “everything else gets better.”
