About Us
BootUp is dedicated to empowering elementary teachers and students through computer science and creating equitable computer science programs in underserved communities. Since 2015, BootUp has worked with over 1,500 elementary schools impacting over 950,000 students, providing in-person professional development, instructional coaching, and on-site support that prepare teachers to facilitate coding projects in Scratch and ScratchJr. Students are inspired through creative and interactive lessons that allow them to explore their personal interests with code.
Our Mission
We prepare and empower teachers to implement elementary coding and computer science programs nationwide in order to reach ALL students, creating equitable access to 21st-century skills.
Our Vision
Ensuring ALL elementary students learn to code by empowering their teachers
Our Values
Integrity
We strongly value and prioritize being honest and having strong principles for doing what we do. Integrity is consistently one of the first values we want to be known for as an organization and as individuals.
Equitable/Egalitarian
BootUp's successes over the years are a result of our ability to collaborate on a team with diverse backgrounds, expertise, opinions, perspectives and experiences.
Innovative
We are constantly striving for innovative and creative solutions that assist with our overall mission and vision. This includes everything from our approach to professional learning to highly engaging interest-driven, project-based curricula.
Proven
Part of our success is because our approach is not only based on educational research, but from extensive feedback from a variety of sources. We actively seek out feedback that continues to refine what we do.
Flexible and Relevant
We believe that computer science education is not only growing at a rapid pace, but is iteratively changing over time. We try to stay flexible and relevant by keeping up-to-date on the latest research and practices in computer science education.
Inclusive and Welcoming Culture
All of us at BootUp genuinely enjoy not only the work that we do, but who we work with. We come from varied backgrounds and cultures that are shared and embraced among the team.
Engaging and fun!
Not only do we try and make the professional development and curriculum engaging and fun, but our work environment and collaborations, as well.
Simple and Iterative
We don't like to make things overly complicated. By keeping things simple, we are able to focus on fine-tuning our approach over time in order to continuously improve what we do. This iterative process is similar to the Japanese concept of "kaizen ( 改善)," which encourages team members to think through and share opportunities for improvement.
Our Team
Lien Diaz
Chief Executive Officer
Suzanne B. Carlson, M. Ed.
Director, Business Development
Brenda Bass
Director, Curriculum & Professional Development, Operations
Heather Cunningham, EdD
Director, CS Educational Equity and Research
McKay Perkins, MS
Manager, Content Development
Manager, Content Strategy
Senior Learning & Implementation Specialist
Melody Hagaman
Manager, Content Development
Manager, Content Strategy
Senior Learning & Implementation Specialist
Ashley Waring
Manager, Content Strategy
Senior Learning & Implementation Specialist
Becky Hansen
Manager, Content Development
Manager, Events
Learning & Implementation Specialist
Tenisha Harrington
Manager, Inclusion & Belonging
Learning & Implementation Specialist
Allison Drake
Manager, Partner Engagement
Learning & Implementation Specialist
Natalie Varkey
Manager, Partner Engagement, Events
Learning & Implementation Specialist
Emilie Martinez
Web Developer
Our Board of Directors
Ari Ioannides
Founder, and Board Treasurer
Todd Ullah, Ed.D
Board Chair and Vice President, National Education Foundation
David Evans
Board Secretary and Chief Relationship & Development Officer, Q Financial Design Workshops, LLC
Allison Miller
Senior Improvement Coach, Ed Direction