Meet our team of doers, makers + innovators.

We design at the intersection of technology, creativity, and the future of work.

We have a passion for equipping students with the skills to solve incredibly gnarly 21st-century problems and a relentless focus on ensuring students gain access to Boston’s innovation economy.

Dr. Sarah Cherry Rice - Executive Director

A creative systems thinker with a delicate balance of bold visioning and intelligent execution, Sarah has the ability to lead innovative projects from concept to pilot to launch so that all students can be prepared for the future. As a former teacher, district administrator, and social entrepreneur, she brings both fresh thinking and a nuanced understanding of urban public school districts. She has the ability to think across education silos, leading with a high sense of urgency while activating communities to drive innovation and change,

While completing her doctorate at Harvard, Sarah launched Parachute Teachers out of The Harvard Innovation Lab, a start-up that brings community members and industry experts into classrooms as part-time facilitators to generate high quality, real-world learning. Most recently, Sarah worked at IDEO to launch an initiative to help public school districts build cultures of creativity and innovation, where teachers and students are empowered to create change. Sarah is passionate about community-driven change and dismantling the systems, infrastructures, and organizations that fuel oppression. She is a proud Boston Public School parent.

Oye - Studio Manager, Engineering

Oye is a mechanical engineer and digital fabrication expert with experience in rapid prototyping and manufacturing. A recent graduate from The Fab Foundation's Fab Academy with a bachelors in mechanical engineering from Northeastern University, Oye uses hands-on digital fabrication to create products that are both functional and aesthetically appealing to solve problems that hinder product performance. He divides his time between the Ministry of Supply 3D Print-Knit Lab and the Fabric Academy at Dassault Systems. He thrives in environments where multidisciplinary team work is promoted. He has extensive work experience in the consumer product industry, ranging from testing to consumer research, that has provided him with a unique skill set and holistic view of the product development cycle. 

LaShawnda - Learning Experience Designer

Over the past decade, LaShawnda’s research has created a platform that sheds light on the social determinants, racial injustices, and cultural biases that burden the progression and viability of Black girls and women. She has mentored Black girls, implemented sustainable programs and initiatives for Black girls, and most recently founded Black Girls Matter: A Social Media Campaign. Prior to joining WCW, Lindsay served as the interim chairperson and an associate professor of education at Paine College in Augusta, GA.

Lindsay also uses her passion and creativity to enhance the wellbeing of girls and women by designing and creating her own line of jewelry and accessories, Ananse Design Essentials. This entrepreneurial endeavor and decade of research on/about/for black girls has promoted the creation of a new initiative, Black Girls Create (BGR). BGR is an informal STEM learning program that integrates fashion design and engineering to increase Black girls’ interest and value in STEM education and careers.

Karla - Learning Experience Designer

Karla is a storyteller at heart and very passionate about LOVE and LEARNING. She's worked in mental health, workforce development, and most recently in K-12 education, both as a teacher and administrator. Although always connected to the non-profit world, she is now also an entrepreneur. As a custom wedding ceremony writer and officiant, she creates and performs non-traditional love celebrations. She seeks to elevate community voices, buck the status quo, and redesign existing systems wherever she takes up space. Karla wants to teach about the power of self love, advocacy, and unapologetic visibility. She seeks to innovate the learning experience through storytelling, technology, and DEI practices that actually work. Follow along on Instagram @onceuponavow.

Jem - Studio Manager, Engineering

Jemuel Stephenson is a visionary, serial entrepreneur, avid researcher, technical artist and designer from Boston, MA with a background in Mechanical Engineering from Bucknell University. He is the founder and CEO of Fabwright Origins, a startup focusing on developing new and improved methods, workflows and products through the application of digital design and integrated manufacture. Jem has been involved in digital fabrication for more than a decade, functioning in various capacities including manager, curriculum developer and instructor in makerspaces and fab labs. He has managed multiple fab labs and has developed and implemented curricula to help people of all ages understand and apply digital design and advanced manufacturing techniques. Since 2012, Stephenson has also served a unique role as a rapid prototyping designer, working with hundreds of clients to design and fabricate hundreds unique projects in art, engineering and more. Jemuel has also worked in association with MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and MIT’s Edgerton Center and the South End Technology Center in Boston, MA. 

Greg - Digital Fabrication Specialist

Greg completed his undergraduate degree in neuroscience at Harvard in 2006. He then worked for a number of political campaigns, including the 2008 campaign for Barack Obama. Since then he has worked in a variety of community non-profits and completed four years in carpentry and construction, including two years building Passive House homes with a Boston-based architecture company. During the summer of 2014, he completed the "Summer of Extreme Design/Build" at Open Source Ecology's Factor-e Farm in Missouri. There he worked with a team of interns and volunteers to advance elements of OSE's Global Village Construction Set - a set of 50 open source machines that can allow a small-scale civilization to sustain itself. He worked on the Compressed-Earth Brickpress, 3D Printers, laser cutter, and open source tractors. In 2017, he began work at a small community-based Fab Lab at Lena Park Community Center in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. There he teaches young people and adults to make (almost) anything.

Bissrat - Learning Experience Designer

Bissrat is a STEM educator committed to fostering curiosity and creativity in young people through hands-on, real life experiences. Before entering the classroom, she co-directed a STEM Education non-profit with the aim of bringing hands-on learning into classrooms. She also managed multiple fab-labs and developed and implemented curriculum to help learners of all ages to learn and apply digital design and fabrication techniques.  As a classroom teacher, she is deeply invested in student-centered classrooms that place a heavy emphasis on community, relationship building, and exploring questions about our authentic selves that lead us back to a deeper understanding of how we can create change in the world around us.

John - Studio Manager, Architecture

John is an architect working at the convergence of public space, art, social justice, and the built environment. His emerging practice in public art, community-engaged design and humanitarian aid aims to utilize design to improve lives. This work is informed by professional experience includes traditional practice in large-scale public space, intermodal-infrastructure, renovation/re-use, and commercial development. John is experienced in engaging enterprise, cultivating client relations, leading teams, and engaging community members and financial stakeholders to shape design outcome. Working in communities spanning from his native Charlotte, NC, John has engaged design projects in Louisville, KY, Fitchburg, and Lowell in MA, and beyond. John is currently serving as an Irving Innovation Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design where he is pursuing a collaborative architectural practice to serve marginalized communities.

Nadyeli - Studio Manager, Architecture

Nadyeli is an architect and landscape architect. She is interested in the convergence of public space, nature, and ecology as a means for social justice and the regeneration of ecosystems mediated by human and non-human communities. Her current research is centered in the intersections of space, design, and emancipation on territories of displacement. Currently, she is studying the Rohingya Refugee Camp in Bangladesh. Her work has been awarded multiple times with grants and fellowships at Harvard University.

Nadyeli has worked before with artists, in public office, for developers, as an independent professional, Teacher Assistant at the GSD, and as a Research Assistant in the Laboratory for Design Technology at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She was a Fellow in the not-for-profit architecture firm MASS Design Group based in Boston. Currently, she is a Research Affiliate at the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University and the 2020 Landscape Architecture Foundation Olmsted Scholar.