Tony DeRose

Board Chair

Tony DeRose is currently an educational consultant. From 1996 to 2018, he was a Senior Scientist at Pixar, where he led Pixar’s Research Group. Previously, he was a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. In recent years he has developed several initiatives to help make math, science, and engineering education more inspiring for middle and high school students. One such initiative is Pixar in a Box, which is designed to show students how concepts they learn in class are used to solve creative challenges at Pixar. Tony’s early participation at Maker Faire with his family led him to co-found Maker Ed with Dale Dougherty and Mark Greenlaw in 2012. DeRose has received two Scientific and Technical Academy Awards (c) for his work on the mathematics of surfaces, as well as the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award. He earned a B.S. in physics from the University of California at Davis and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Jen Phillips

Jen Phillips leads Making & Science programs at Google, where she supports hands-on learning for kids and adults. She oversees programs that put maker spaces in schools and community spaces, send students to science museums, provide tools and technology to parents and educators, and get Googlers involved in making, Maker Faires, and maker education.

Jen has invested over $50 million in making, science, and computer science through programs, sponsorships, and collaborations with universities and nonprofits. Previously Jen was a University Relations manager, leading Google’s academic research investments in the Midwest and Canada. She started her career at Google using big data to improve customer engagement programs for online advertisers and publishers.

Jen studied Economics at Columbia University and now lives in San Francisco.

Kathryn Nash

Vice Chair

Kathryn Nash is the Associate Director of Educational Affairs at Cognizant. She oversees Cognizant’s corporate social responsibility programs in North America and leads the Making the Future education initiative to inspire and prepare the next generation of innovators. Cognizant through its Making the Future initiative has committed to providing 1.5 million hours of Making experiences for 25,000 children in over 200 U.S. communities by 2017. She is responsible for a comprehensive STEM initiative that includes: advocacy, scholarships, non-profit partnerships and Making programs grants. Prior to joining Cognizant she served as Director of Civic Engagement for Citizen Schools Texas from 2005 to 2011 building public-private partnerships to provide in-kind, financial and human capital to close the opportunity gap for underserved youth. Her career has spanned both business and education: 18 years in business including 10 years as a business owner and 10 years as a teacher in inner-city middle schools. Kathryn is a graduate of the University of Texas in Austin.

Robin Baskin McNulty

Secretary

Kipp Bradford

Kipp Bradford is an entrepreneur, technology consultant, educator, and passionate maker, and the Founder/Principal of Kippworks. He has founded start-ups in the fields of transportation, consumer products, HVAC, and medical devices, and holds numerous patents for his inventions. Some of his more interesting projects become kippkitts.

Kipp co-wrote Distributed Network Data (hardware hacking for Data Scientists) and cofounded the Data Sensing Lab. He supports several startup accelerators, including Highway1, guiding founders through business planning, crowdfunding, and more. Kipp co-organizes RI’s mini Maker Faire and the Washington, DC Mini Maker Faire. He is a USA SciFest’s “Nifty Fifty” speaker. Kipp was also a keynote speaker at the O’Reilly Solid, and was recognized as a leading innovator at Frost & Sullivan’s GIL 2013. As the former Senior Design Engineer and Lecturer at the Brown University School of Engineering, Kipp taught engineering design and entrepreneurship. He serves on several nonprofit boards, is on the technical advisory board of MAKE Magazine, and is also a Fellow at the College of Design, Engineering and Commerce at Philadelphia University.

Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty is the founder and CEO of Maker Media based in San Francisco, CA and Board Chairman of the Maker Education Initiative. He created MAKE: magazine, which launched in 2005, and Maker Faire, which first started in the Bay Area in 2006. In 2014, there were 131 Maker Faires around the world, including large ones in San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Rome, Tokyo and Shenzhen. Dougherty was a partner in O’Reilly & Associates, helping to launch its publishing business. At O’Reilly, he was the developer of Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first commercial website, launched in 1993 and sold to America Online in 1995. He coined the term “Web 2.0” to define the Web 2.0 conference series. He is passionate about fostering a new generation of ‘makers’ who are creative, innovative, and curious. On November 3, 2011, the White House recognized Dale as one of the “Champions of Change: Make It In America,” for his work in helping to create high-quality jobs in the United States. In 2014, President Obama hosted a White House Maker Faire. He believes that one of the most significant contributions of the Maker Movement will be to transform education by inviting young people to learn and develop their creative and technical abilities as makers.

Martha Chavarin

Martha Chavarin is a licensed attorney, currently with the Employment Law and Investigations team at Facebook, where she leads a team of workplace investigators. Previously she worked for the University of California, Berkeley as a Complaint Resolution Officer, where she also handled workplace grievances and helped launch the Resolution Center, an alternative dispute resolution program for staff. 

Martha is skilled at creating safe and inclusive spaces, and has extensive training in mediation, conflict coaching, trauma-informed interviewing, diversity and inclusion, and restorative justice. In addition to creating respectful workplaces, she served as a doula for over a decade, providing physical, emotional, and informational support to women and their families during the birth process.

Martha has witnessed the transformative power of education in her own life and is passionate about promoting educational opportunities for vulnerable and marginalized youth. She served as a volunteer educational tutor in a maximum juvenile detention center, working with adolescents striving to complete their high school graduation requirements. As an attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, she also trained numerous professionals in California and Texas committed to serving the needs of immigrant children, including social workers, juvenile court judges, child advocates, paralegals, and attorneys. 

Martha received her Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles, and her Juris Doctor from UC Berkeley School of Law.

Jay Melican

Kaustav Mitra

Kaustav Mitra is the Vice President of Educator Programs at Tynker, the world’s most widely-used K-12 platform focused on teaching children to become makers through the use of code.

Mitra formerly served as Chairperson and President of Infosys Foundation USA, the largest private charitable foundation in the U.S. focused on K-12 Computer Science and Maker education programs targeting underserved communities. At the foundation, Mitra launched several key initiatives including a pioneering partnership with the National Science Foundation and DonorsChoose.org for crowdfunding Computer Science professional development for teachers. He established the Pathfinders Summer Institute, an annual weeklong Maker and CS education professional development program that has served thousands of K-12 teachers. Mitra also started the InfyMaker Awards program to recognize and celebrate individuals and community organizations demonstrating Maker-themed innovation, as well as the #WhyIMake Maker awareness PSA series that has been viewed over 1 billion times on broadcast television. Mitra oversaw $19 million in grants to over 40 not-for-profits nationwide, benefiting over 20,000 schools and positively impacting close to five million students.

He started his career as an entrepreneur, founding a technology services company in Southern California. His first job was as a video game developer and programming instructor in high school, for his second, he designed and prototyped a mechanical vibration table on a sewing machine chassis for the manufacture of micro-concrete roofing tiles to supplement income for women in rural India.

Mitra has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from BITS, Pilani, a premier engineering college in India, and a graduate degree in Economics from the University of Southern California. An avid science-fiction reader, he lives in Palo Alto, California with his spouse — a meditation and mindfulness teacher — two teenagers, and an excessively affectionate dog.

Pam Moran

Dr. Pam Moran, retired superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia, has been a middle school science teacher, elementary principal, and assistant superintendent. Her former school district is home to some of the most contemporary learning spaces in the United States, represented by a commitment to a “search, connect, communicate and make” model for unleashing the lifelong learning potential of young people across 26 schools, 726 square miles of rural, suburban and urban environments. Educators from her district are well known for their work to infuse Maker work across the curricula. Libraries in the district are transformative and the Monticello High Library recently received the Magna Award from NSBA for its premier maker spaces. The school district was featured in Newsweek’s article “Will the Maker Movement Reinvent Education?” and has been the subject of numerous articles and posts on the maker movement. The district is a charter member of Maker Ed’s Maker Corps program. The district attributes its 2% dropout rate and 95% graduation rate and distinguished performance in part to integration of make-to-learn across curricula.

Pam has served as a president of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents as well as the Women Educational Leaders of Virginia. She currently serves as a board member of the State Higher Education Council for Virginia. Recognized as a national Tech Savvy Superintendent in 2010, recipient of the Bammy Superintendent’s Award in 2013, and named Virginia Superintendent of the Year in 2015, she has presented and keynoted at numerous state and national conferences. She currently is a member of the Maker Ed advisory board, the Alliance for Excellent Education Team of Experts, and the Academy of Education Arts and Sciences Council of Peers.

Matt Therian

Treasurer

Matt is a Partner at SciFi VC, which invests in early-stage companies tackling hard problems in areas including fintech, synthetic biology, and other breakthrough sciences. Matt has led finance and operations at SciFi VC and its related startup studio, HVF Labs, since 2015. He is a CFA Charterholder and earned an MBA from Berkeley-Haas, where he served as Co-President of the Haas Investment Management Club and a Principal of the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund. Before pursuing his MBA, Matt was a Research Analyst at Renaissance Capital, which provides independent fundamental research on initial public offerings and related investment management services. Matt also has experience in investment banking and quantitative market research. Matt studied Economics and Government as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. He enjoys jogging and has finished a half marathon. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Kristine.