About Us
Mission
App Inventor was founded in 2007 by educators and researchers at MIT and Google with the vision of enabling anyone—including those who may not think of themselves as coders—to create mobile apps for real, effective change in their communities. The App Inventor Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established by the same team, and expands upon the educational initiatives of the MIT App Inventor project by offering additional resources for teachers and students across the globe. Our mission is to empower students of any background and any age to make apps that improve their lives, uplift their communities, and change the world.
Learn more about the App Inventor Foundation’s impact and work by reading our Annual Impact Report below.
Team
Dr. Natalie Lao
CEO & Executive Director
As Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation, Natalie’s mission is to empower anyone, anywhere, of any age to create meaningful technologies that can transform their lives and the lives of people around them. She fell in love with App Inventor when she discovered it teaching high school computer science, and saw its power to rapidly transform students from passive consumers of technology into active creators of it. She joined the MIT App Inventor lab as an undergraduate research assistant during her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she received her B.S., M.Eng., and Ph.D. in EECS and AI. At MIT, she was Co-creator and Instructor for the Deep Learning Practicum course, and led the trajectory team for the Inclusive AI Literacy and Learning project. Her research on databases, AI, ML, and educational frameworks has been featured by MIT News and UNESCO. Natalie also serves as Individual Specialist for UNESCO's AI & the Futures of Learning project.
David Petty
Education Program Manager
David is a lifelong STEM educator, community builder, and education leader. For the past 20 years, he was a computing, engineering, and robotics high school teacher, most recently at Brookline High School in Massachusetts. He also coached Technovation Girls and robotics teams. He was Co-Founder of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) New England Regional Conference and Co-President of the CSTA Greater Boston chapter, where he has helped promote computing and standards-aligned curricula for teachers and students across the state and country. He was a member of the Digital Literacy and Computer Science (DLCS) standards review committee, which helped develop the MA 2016 DLCS Framework and the MA DLCS Tests for Educational Licensure® (MTEL 71), as well as a contributor to the 2023 MA K–12 Computer Science Curriculum Guide.
Zareen Choudhury
Program Manager
Zareen’s interests lie at the intersection of education technology, social impact, and storytelling. She received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, after which she worked as a software engineer at Samsara. She then went on to teach computer science at Inspirit AI, serve as Managing Editor of Children of 1971, and complete a nonprofit fellowship through YCore. Her role as Program Manager at the App Inventor Foundation involves organizing the Regional Appathon Program and the Global AI Hackathon, which taps into her varied interests and experiences. She is also a freelance writer and cartoonist whose work has been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Nib, and more.
Angie Zhou
Instructional Designer
Angie Zhou is a passionate educator in computational thinking, computer science, AI and entrepreneurship. She has been part of the MIT App Inventor Education team and MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node since 2021 and has worked on large-scale computational thinking and AI education roll-out programs such as CoolThink@JC in Hong Kong. Angie has published books, research papers and even board games on computational thinking and AI education. She has extensive experience in curriculum design, teacher training and teaching. She started teaching coding and computer science to K-12 students in 2014. She has an undergraduate degree in Engineering from the University of Cambridge.
Prof. Hal Abelson
Board Member
Hal is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the EECS department at MIT and a Fellow of the IEEE. His work in making information technology more accessible for all has made him a worldwide leader in computer science education. He is a founding director of Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation, and the App Inventor project. Throughout his impressive career, he has played key roles in fostering MIT institutional educational technology initiatives and has served as co-chair of the MIT Council on Educational Technology. He has received many awards for teaching computer science, including the Bose Award, the Taylor L. Booth Education Award, and the ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education.
Mark Friedman
Board Member
Mark is a co-founder of the App Inventor project, led its initial development at Google as tech lead and manager, and is currently an MIT Research Affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He has supported the growth of App Inventor from a small research project to a global platform used by millions of learners and professional app developers alike, and he continues to be dedicated to its ongoing and expanding mission. Mark has been a technology leader at companies large (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Oracle) and small (e.g., Thunkable, Piper). He also serves as an adjunct professor of computer science at the University of San Francisco. His long-standing interests are to open up computer programming to everyone, and to contribute to the uses of technology in education.
Jeff Schiller
Board Chair
Jeff is the former Area Director for Security with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), where he spent 9 years shepherding the development of critical Internet security technology including IP layer encryption, E-mail encryption, and Transport Layer Security (https). He also served as MIT Enterprise Architect for decades, where he manages MIT's Internet presence and Security Infrastructure. Jeff uses his world-class expertise to support the development and operations of the App Inventor project, ensuring secure, privacy-compliant, and speedy access for millions of students and teachers across the globe.
Tianyi Huang
Student Ambassador
Tianyi (Tony) Huang is a rising senior at American High School in California and the founder and president of App-In Club, a global student-led nonprofit that empowers students of all ages to create impactful apps. Since learning about MIT App Inventor in 9th grade, Tony has created numerous apps and won the Congressional App Challenge and the World Artificial Intelligence Competition for Youth (WAICY). He has presented at AI and education conferences, including the GenAI Summit SF 2024, where he organized the K12 AI Initiative, attracting over 4,000 in-person attendees. As the first Student Ambassador of the App Inventor Foundation, Tony aims to help expand its mission and inspire others to create meaningful app solutions. By doing so, he hopes to contribute to a future where every student can utilize technology to make a positive impact on the world.
Advisors
Charleston Sin
Director, Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company
Karen Lang
Curriculum Developer, Technovation
Keertan Kini
Stanford MBA/MPP
McKinsey & Company
Lisa O’Brien
Chief Development Officer,
Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound School