About

Struggling with Dyslexia fostered my:

1. 1

   Empathy and purpose for making the world a better place

2. 2

   Reframing perspective of uniqueness as strength & challenge as opportunities

3. 3

   Passion for entrepreneurship by seeing my mentor (Elenn Steinberg) revolutionize dyslexic education, tutoring, policy, and culture by being unacceptant of the “dyslexics being dumb” status quo then willing a network of aligned stakeholders into existence to solve, self reinforce, and propagate outwards sustainably the solution the neurodiversity space greatly deserved even after she has since passed away

4. 4

   Confidence in being an agent of change through being empowered to destigmatize neurodiversity on the public stage. See my TEDx talk “Reframe your struggle into your super power” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSjArNGCLtc)

All of which gave me courage and unwillingness to accept broken systems as they are, and the experience of being an agent for change myself and more importantly facilitate the network of others to all sustainably be their own agents of change.

My Research Institution like k-8 education cultivated my:

1. 1

   Unsatiated lifelong curiosity of the systems of the world (no matter the sector or breadth/depth) and their deep interconnectedness

2. 2

   Extensive entrepreneurial experience at a young age through rapid experimentation, failure, and learning of building numerous ventures, inventions, projects, technology, and research

3. 3

   Love of being around likeminded intensely curious and passionate individuals

Venture Capital and Finance Research experience opened my eyes up to the systems of capital of the world which are necessary in understanding and creating structural change in the world

Being someone who has always created things fostered my:

1. 1

   Instinct and curiosity because my first thoughts were always “how does this work?” and “how can I make it myself?”

2. 2

   Drive to build at the frontier of research, including: building models of wind turbines, waterwheels, and desalination systems throughout elementary and middle school; training a machine learning model for p53-MDM2 inhibition in early-stage cancers (presented at the UPenn National Research Conference); leading engineering on Flush Plush, an Arduino-based plush that eases agitation episodes in people with dementia; publishing early memos on machine learning in the Library of Congress; and currently collaborating on publishing frontier research on benevolent patents into Congress

All of which made building my default response to any problem, and taught me that while my tools keep changing, my curiosity stays the same.

Robotics and design thinking brought my building into community, which cultivated my:

1. 1

   Ability to listen. At Stanford, I took a Design Thinking class where I sat around tables with people from every corner of the world and every walk of life, and realized that the people living a problem understand it in ways no amount of research alone can capture. Since then, I’ve created various proposals across sustainability research and other sectors to solve problems important to those people.

2. 2

   Refusal to accept that things are simply the way they are, and focusing on building for the real people in front of me. As the only girl on my robotics team, I ran STEM classes designed specifically for over 2500 girls and children around local communities (onboarded three onto my team the next year.)

3. 3

   Ability to scale what I build to communities I'd never met, by leading the creation of Kurio Kits, Arduino-based drawing robots with a self-developed curriculum that now reach 400+ underserved kids through schools and nonprofits in Vietnam, Guatemala, and Morocco.

All of these experiences have taught me to point my creativity toward what communities themselves care about.

More recently, finance opened my eyes to the system beneath all the others: capital. Behind every problem I had cared about was a question of where capital and resources flow and who decides. I realized how often the people who want to make a structural change in their community are guessing about where to position themselves or even whom to collaborate with. This is why I’m building Ryndel Labs.