What if every child had the chance to learn how the digital world actually works before choosing a career path? Not to become a programmer necessarily, but to understand, shape, and participate in the systems that increasingly define our lives. That question sits at the heart of our latest Impact Runde podcast conversation with Julia Freudenberg, CEO of the Hacker School. When we spoke with Julia, we didn’t just talk about education or technology. We talked about access, confidence, and what it really takes to create fair opportunities for young people in a rapidly digitizing society.
Listen to the full episode here! 👉 Spotify | Apple
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Julia’s path into social entrepreneurship wasn’t linear. She spent more than 15 years at Unilever in sales and product management, learning how organizations operate, how strategy gets implemented, and how teams grow. What might look like a big leap into the nonprofit world was, in reality, a shift in focus: taking everything she learned in the corporate environment and applying it to something with deeper societal impact. Instead of optimizing products, she now works to open doors for thousands of students across Germany.
The Hacker School’s idea is beautifully simple: connect kids with tech professionals, create safe spaces to experiment, and let them code, build, and explore without pressure. Today, the organization reaches more than 25,000 students every year. As Julia told us in the episode, “Every child should have the chance to learn coding before they choose a career path.” Because digital literacy isn’t just a technical skill anymore, it’s a form of participation. If young people understand technology, they don’t just consume it - they can shape it.
Of course, bringing modern digital education into schools isn’t always straightforward. There are bureaucratic hurdles, infrastructure gaps, and privacy regulations to navigate. What stood out to us is Julia’s mindset: not fighting the system, but working to improve it from within. By building trust with schools, partnering with volunteers and companies, and demonstrating real outcomes, the Hacker School creates change step by step. Less big promises, more tangible results. It’s a pragmatic, ecosystem-driven approach that feels very aligned with how we think about impact at Public Value Hub.
Looking ahead, Julia’s vision goes beyond individual workshops. She’s focused on long-term, structural change: stronger partnerships, smarter financing models, and sustainable systems that ensure digital education isn’t dependent on short-term projects. It’s about building something that lasts. And that’s what made this conversation stick with us. Because sometimes impact doesn’t look flashy - sometimes it’s simply a young person discovering a new skill and realizing, “I can do this.” Moments like that can change an entire future.
When we asked Julia what’s really at stake, her answer wasn’t just better tech classes. It was fairness. Because in a digital world, access to skills means access to opportunity. And that shouldn’t depend on where you grow up or which school you attend. The Hacker School proves that small, practical steps can create lasting change - one workshop, one volunteer, one student discovering: “I can do this.”
If you’d like to hear Julia’s full story and learn more about how the Hacker School is reshaping digital education in Germany, tune into the latest episode of Impact Runde.
Listen to the full episode here! 👉 Spotify | Apple
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