
Jared O'Leary
Jared O’Leary has over a decade of teaching experience and is committed to supporting teachers and districts by sharing open source resources. Jared has shared hundreds of resources with other educators and has given over 100 conference presentations and guest lectures. Prior to joining BootUp, Jared facilitated district-wide K-8 coding courses, a media arts makerspace, a music production course, and a variety of music classes and ensembles.
Jared has a PhD in Music Education from Arizona State University. Jared’s award-winning dissertation is titled “A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of music-related practices discussed within chipmusic.org." Jared’s research interests include the intersections between music engagement, learning, and computer science; music engagement and learning through video games and interactive audio; and affinity, hybrid, and participatory music making and learning. Jared has designed and facilitated undergraduate and graduate education courses at Arizona State University, undergraduate courses at Paradise Valley Community College, and supervised a doctoral dissertation at Boston University that explored the intersections of music and computer science.
Jared is one of ten worldwide recipients of the 2016 Awards for Teaching Excellence in Computer Science from the Infosys Foundation USA, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Jared is also an Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) and was invited to the 2016 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on an educator scholarship.
At BootUp, Jared designs projects and resources for elementary coding teachers and young coders, advises our professional development team, collaborates on research projects, and hosts the #CSK8 Podcast.
Our Team

Clark Merkley
Executive Director

Abby Funabiki, MPA
Associate Executive Director

Jared O'Leary, PhD
Director of Education & Research

Karen Melara
Marketing Manager

Tizara Taylor
District Coding Accelerator

Suzanne B. Carlson, M. Ed.
District Coding Accelerator

Brenda Bass
Lead PD Facilitator

McKay Perkins, MS
Senior PD Facilitator

Laurie Green
Senior PD Facilitator

Heather Cunningham
Senior PD Facilitator

Carlos Leon
Senior PD Facilitator

Melody Hagaman
Senior PD Facilitator

Ashley Waring
Senior PD Facilitator

Kelly Powers
PD Facilitator

Michael Hanahan
Marketing Consultant
Emilie Martinez
Web Developer

Stacie Mason, PhD
Research and Evaluation