August 21, 5:30 PM Eastern with Guests Mary Jo Madda (Google) and Chelsea Roebuck (Elite Education)
Episode Description
We need to better understand how formal and informal learning environments respectively address the needs and/or fail to prepare Black, Latino/Hispanic, and native/indigenous students to meet specific demands of an ever-shifting, increasingly technical working world in the space of cloud computing, data analytics, and “the internet of things.” In Mary Jo Madda’s current dissertation work, she’s exploring how public high school programs compare with informal, after-school programs—specifically Code Next—when training high school freshmen of color (Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native/Indigenous) on the most quickly-growing industries, including cloud computing and data science.
Chelsea Roebuck leads ELITE, a community based youth development organization that utilizes STEM education as a vehicle to empower low-opportunity students to realize their academic and career potential. Since 2009, ELiTE has pioneered hands-on STEM and computer science programs in low-income communities throughout Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and New York City. ELiTE has worked hard over the past few years to explore STEM readiness more broadly, developing models and technology solutions to increased opportunity through improved readiness for postsecondary STEM pathways. Its research explores the underrepresentation of students of color that attend schools that more consistently and more reliably prepare students’ for postsecondary STEM pathways. Through his work with ELiTE, Chelsea has seen incredible value in being able to develop, iterate, and refine effective STEM models in the informal education or out-of-school spaces that can then be proven, and implemented within formal school systems. It would be interesting the explore the role of informal education more broadly as a testbed or incubator for innovation in formal education.
More about the guests below the video
Episode Guests
Mary Jo Madda (@MJMadda) is the Growth & Engagement Strategy Lead for several diversity + education initiatives at Google, and a doctoral student at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Previously, she was a Director at EdSurge. At the start of her career, she taught middle school math/science with Teach for America’s Houston corps (specifically KIPP Houston) and later with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at St. Cyril of Jerusalem School, where she also served as an administrator, curriculum coordinator, and decathlon coach. Following her years teaching, she was a member of the ScratchED team at the MIT Media Lab, was an instructional coach with MATCH Charter Schools, and served as one of four founding Education Entrepreneurship Fellows at the Harvard University Innovation Lab while piloting an educational media start-up. She was also a fellow in the Harvard Graduate School Leadership Institute. Mary Jo has an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. from Northwestern University. She was featured on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list for 2016 for her work at EdSurge, and has spoken at venues including Stanford, the University of Virginia, and TEDxChicago.
After graduating with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University in 2010, Chelsey Roebuck has since dedicated his years to creating meaningful impact towards addressing STEM education inequality as a means to close the achievement gap and provide opportunities for economic mobility for thousands of youth across the Americas and Africa. Among his numerous awards and recognitions, Chelsey earned a prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship in 2013, was named by Forbes Magazine as one of ‘30 Under 30 in Education’ in 2016, and was honored alongside President Barack Obama as the recipient of the Evelyn Kamen Rising Star Award in 2017. In addition to his work with ELiTE, Chelsey also serves as a co-founder & Board member for Vectorly (formerly dotLearn), an ultra data-light digital education platform to increase access to online educational resources in emerging markets. Chelsey is also a Speaking Ambassador for the US Department of State and serves on the Board for a number of social impact organizations including Global Code (UK), Girl Be Heard (USA). and Tech Leads Ghana (GH).