Teaching

I’ve been teaching people to make things with technology for fifteen years, in graduate seminars, art nonprofits, corporate classrooms, and summer bootcamps. My approach comes from theater and social change work: humanize the technology, explain it in plain language, and design the class so trying something new feels safe. The tools have run from copper tape and LEDs to p5.js to AI agents. The teaching is the same.

Now: AI upskilling at scale

My current classroom is Intuit's 9,000-person technology org, where I design the learning programs behind Global Engineering Days and GED Workshop Week: thousands of live sessions teaching engineers, PMs, and designers to build with AI. I also run the Tech Leadership Forum, where Intuit's senior technology leaders gather to pressure-test the ideas and narratives that later reach the whole org, because leaders need a classroom too, and designing one for executives is its own craft. It's the same work as a ten-person workshop, scaled three orders of magnitude in one direction and up the org chart in the other.

Gray Area: Creative Code programs

As Creative Development Director at Gray Area (2017 to 2022), I ran the education program and artist incubator for San Francisco's home for art and technology, and I ran the Creative Code Intensive, the twelve-week program that takes artists, designers, and career-changers from coding fundamentals through a public showcase. My teaching focus within the program: algorithmic web art, JavaScript and p5.js, and physical computing and wearables. Today the Intensive teaches AI and machine learning alongside creative code, and I serve as Gray Area's board chairperson. I also mentored high school students in the Creative Code Apprenticeship with Dolby, building a generative video installation at Dolby Laboratories.

• JavaScript and p5.js class site

• Physical Computing 2 / Wearables class site

Everything But The Art: The Business of Creativity

I created Everything But The Art at Gray Area, a five-week course on the part of an art career nobody teaches: portfolios, grants, digital presence, and financial sustainability. I recruited instructors including Creative Capital's founding director Ruby Lerner, and co-taught the Digital Presence for Creatives session, on SEO and marketing strategy for artists. The course lives on at Gray Area as a self-paced program.

Workshops: Apple, Intuit, and beyond

I taught soft circuits at the Apple Store San Francisco as part of the Hour of Code and Code with Apple series, with participants building working circuits from paper, copper tape, and LED stickers. At Intuit I've taught NFT and pixel art workshops for the Scott Cook Innovation Award winners, and designed new media workshops for corporate teams. My NFT DIY workshop at Gray Area taught artists to mint their first pieces on low-energy proof-of-stake chains.

Universities

• Parsons School of Design: creative code in the MFA Design and Technology program (JavaScript, openFrameworks, Arduino), at my alma mater.

• University of San Francisco: interaction and time-based design in the Department of Art + Architecture. Class site

• Academy of Art, San Francisco: I taught a soft circuits course teaching students how to integrate microprocessors and electronic components into wearable art and metal objects.

• St. Joseph's College, Brooklyn: web and graphic design in the BA Art department. Class site

Teaching girls to build

At the Bay Area Video Coalition, I designed and taught the Girl Game Makers Bootcamp with Zynga: an intensive summer of game design for girls 14 to 20, built on Scratch and the iterative design process, ending with each team presenting their games to industry critics at Zynga. The class blog is still up, and it's still one of my favorite things on the internet.

Student work

A portfolio of student work from across these classes →

Closing

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