About
Why a ladder
Rungwell is a not-for-profit corporation, founded in Toronto in 2015, that sells data annotation and spends what it earns on the people who do it.
Our name
When Nadine Arsenault and Joseph Githinji started Rungwell, they drew a ladder on a whiteboard in a borrowed office in Kilimani. The bottom rung was a first job. The rungs above it were what a first job should lead to: a skill, a promotion, a reference, a better job, with us or somewhere else.
A rung is a step you can stand on. We named the organization after it, and we measure ourselves against it every year in our impact report.
What we are
- Legal form
- A not-for-profit corporation under Canadian federal law. We have no shareholders, and surpluses are never distributed.
- Subsidiaries
- Rungwell Kenya Limited (Nairobi) and Rungwell Philippines, Inc. (Quezon City), which employ our labellers
- People
- 2,964 in delivery roles at the end of 2025, and 64 in Toronto
- Income
- Almost entirely from clients; a small share from foundation grants for training
- Governance
- A board of eight, including a director elected by labellers. See Governance.
History
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Rungwell Inc. is incorporated in Toronto as a not-for-profit corporation.
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The Nairobi centre opens with 60 labellers.
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The first ethics charter is adopted.
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Nairobi starts a second shift.
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The Manila centre opens.
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Rungwell at Home begins, as 1,104 labellers move home in nine days.
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Joseph Githinji steps back; Esther Ndirangu becomes Country Director, Kenya.
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Nairobi’s fourth floor opens.
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Focus Assurance is introduced; ISO/IEC 27001 certification follows in June.
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Manila’s ninth floor opens, with the first cohort of Deaf labellers.
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Labellers elect a director to the board for the first time.
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The four-thousandth person joins Rungwell.
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The third edition of the ethics charter adds an article on provenance.
Page last reviewed 12 October 2026