Business and Technology University
Organization Details
Business and Technology University (BTU) represents a higher education and research unit in the country of Georgia that combines and integrates business and modern technology and supports development of innovative and creative entrepreneurial markets locally and globally. Founded in 2016, as the part of Silicon Valley Tbilisi, BTU has 5000 students, 400 employees and a degree portfolio of 4 ongoing Bachelor‘s, 3 Master‘s, 1 PhD and 8 international double degree diploma programs at BA and MA level. BTU boasts partnerships with more than 60 leading international universities and institutionს. The partners are mainly coming from the USA and European Union - BTU was the very first regional partner of MIT, establishing the MIT Global Startup Lab program at the University in 2020 and becoming the member of MIT's Martin Trust Center in 2021, which is a clear confirmation that in a short period of time the institution has become a very successful and dynamic university in Georgia.
Impact Story
With the mission to offer the students and beneficiaries, with the focus on gender disbalance, the unique educational experience, develop their leadership and entrepreneurship skills, and motivate them to become competitive work-force on both, local and international markets, BTU chose the path of supporting women and girls and their development crossing all three - social, economic, and educational sectors and disseminating the knowledge of the tech industry, today’s leading one on the global market in terms of demand on specialists, salary ranges, and the perspective on exporting professional services. Utmost importance of having tech skills, especially among women - most underrepresented group with biggest salary gaps among those employed - and even more importantly among women from minority groups that lack access to tech education and internationalization opportunities, have been proved largely during the pandemic during which a large portion of population (those employed) have lost physical jobs without an option of working remotely.
With support from the international donors (European Commission, USAID, UN Women, Government of Norway, U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Swedish Institute, EFSE etc.), BTU's project management team has managed more than 61 local/international projects with a total budget of more than 500,000.00 USD and more than 10,000 beneficiaries nationwide since 2016.
In 2019, BTU with the support of UN Women started to execute a social project "Coding School for Women’ to strengthen the role of women in the technological sector. Later, in partnership with US Embassy Tbilisi and Liberty Bank, the project upskilled 500+ beneficiaries with more than 70% of employment rate and resulted in a 50% rise of girls who are willing to apply for BA ICT programs at BTU which has always been highly dominated by men. The initiative has been awarded Grace Hopper’s award for the best program and the Emerging Europe’s Award in the future-proof education category.
Diverse Social Enterprise
The TRANSFORM Support Hub is committed to accelerating diverse owned and led enterprises to build more equitable and resilient supply chains.
