2000
Aimionoizomo O. Akade An outstanding member of the girls’ varsity basketball and outdoor track teams for all four years, Momo Akade was captain of both teams when they won New England championships her senior year. In 1999, she set the PA girls’ outdoor track record for the 200-meter event—25.6 seconds—a straightaway record that still holds today. Akade earned a BA degree at Yale, where she studied architecture and history. She then taught history and coached basketball and track at Choate Rosemary Hall and the Dwight-Englewood School. Akade later served as dean of students 2
at Prep for Prep, a leadership development program for high-achieving, underrepresented students of color. In 2012, she earned an MEd degree from the Learning, Design, and Technology Program at Stanford University. Akade’s background in teaching and technology came together when she founded GigaBryte, a company that introduces children to programming with wearable technology. Using a drag-anddrop interface, kids are able to code lights and sensors on their sneakers to produce a personalized pattern or sequence. The focus on sneakers has helped
engage urban youth, spark an interest in programming, and bridge a growing ethnic and racial divide in computing. Akade is passionate about designing technology-mediated solutions that promote learning in formal and informal environments. She is an alumna of two premier Silicon Valley startup accelerator programs: Imagine K12, the “Y Combinator of the education industry,” and StartX, Stanford’s accelerator for its top student founders. Additionally, Akade is an NBC Education Nation 2013 Innovation Challenge finalist and a 2013 Echoing Green Fellow.