Ello

Our mission at Ello is to maximize the potential of every child, so it was very fulfilling to partner with Dent Education this summer, a Baltimore non-profit dedicated to empowering youth to discover & develop their innate creative potential to shape the world around them. We hired their high school interns to design, build, and install Little Free Libraries full of Ello books all over Baltimore & DC to promote literacy! Thanks to WJZ | CBS News Baltimore for sharing our story here: https://lnkd.in/eiZG-_w8 Thank you to all the partners that made this happen, including Little Free Library for their mission to build community, inspire readers, and expand book access globally; Micky Wolf for his leadership at Dent; Maria Vogelei for being the mastermind behind this campaign, and to Big Swing Communications for being incredible champions of our work. It takes a village! (And a library!) 📚

👋 Welcome to our newest teammate and platform engineer, Ken Wanjohi! Ken is a self-taught full-stack engineer who graduated with a degree in Education, specializing in Mathematics and Geography. He began learning programming during his undergraduate studies and has continued to pursue it passionately ever since. After graduating and working briefly as a high school teacher, Ken transitioned into software engineering, working as a product engineer in health tech at Access Afya. As a self-taught developer, Ken strongly believes in the transformative power of education and the many pathways it opens, leading to positive outcomes. He views technology as an enabler in education, expanding possibilities and bridging gaps. Looking ahead, Ken is excited to continue leveraging technology to solve real-world problems and make an impact. Ken is based in Nairobi, Kenya. He loves spending time with friends and family and enjoys watching movies and sports—he is a huge fan of tennis, Formula 1, and football. Favorite children’s Book: Tortoise Wings 📚

Our favorite Olympian and teammate Peter Chatain made the front page news of the Chicago Tribune before his big race tomorrow! Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/e3xyzBEu "This is a job that hits all my bullet points,” Chatain said. “I get to work on an interesting problem with AI. I get to do actual technical work and I get to have a positive impact. AI has such a potential for good. I am excited to be at a place to make that happen...It’s just amazing to have a company that’s super excited about what I’m doing at the Olympics and how much work I’ve put in,” he said. “I know I’m very lucky.” Peter, we know that we're the lucky ones to have someone as driven, hard-working, and talented as you are. So excited to cheer you on in the finals tomorrow morning! 🇺🇸

🎉 Our very own Ello teammate Peter Chatain won his first heat for the USA men's eight rowing team this morning! 🇺🇸 We are so excited to be cheering him on in the OLYMPIC FINALS on Saturday. To celebrate the biggest race of his life, we wrote an Ello original children's book about Peter -- learn more about this inspiring Machine Learning engineer and Olympian here! https://lnkd.in/e7DKMQuG Thank you to author Sarah Tenney and illustrator liane nichole fernando for their great work on this project. And don't forget to check out this NBC news story about how Peter juggles life both in the boat and in the office: https://lnkd.in/eWu6ukie We're all so proud of you, Peter! 🚣♀️ 💪

We're all so proud of our teammate and Machine Learning engineer Peter Chatain who will be rowing for Team USA 🇺🇸 in the Paris Olympics next week! Check out this news story about how he crushes it both in the boat and in the office. Peter, we're so inspired by you and how hard you've worked to achieve this lifelong dream! 💪

Hometown friends! (I'm looking at you, NoVa.) Ello is #hiring for an events coordinator to lead family-friendly events all across the DMV this summer to promote our reading app. If you know anyone looking for a contract summer role with a mission-driven edtech startup passionate about literacy, please spread the word! https://lnkd.in/eJ69mJXC

We're #hiring for an Events Coordinator this summer, ideally located in Arlington, VA! If you know someone with a passion for community engagement, a knack for logistics, and the desire to lead a team of incredible Ello ambassadors, please tag them here! This role will oversee the success of 30+ planned events all over the DMV region this summer to promote awareness of Ello's reading app. This is a contract role that will work directly with our Chief Experience Officer to grow Ello’s footprint and help close the literacy gap in our nation’s capital. Apply today! https://lnkd.in/eCjSmQYV

Do you live in the Washington, DC metro area? If so, you'll get a chance to meet our newest teammates who will be promoting Ello at family-friendly events all over the region to encourage summer reading and help prevent summer learning loss when schools are closed! Join us in welcoming our newest team members: Sara Modeh, Kofi Frimpong, Conor Vaughn, Catalina Cowell, Ameera Daboh, Greg Anderson, and Tyler Spears. Led by Maria Vogelei, this amazing team is hitting the pavement all over the DC region to ensure children continue learning and growing all summer long!

🎉 We're thrilled to welcome back Shivatmica Murgai to the team as a returning Machine Learning intern this summer before she starts her freshman year at Stanford University this fall! Shivatmica is hands-down one of the brightest young minds we have ever encountered. When we introduce her to others, we often get asked for recruiting advice: "How did you find Shivatmica?” Last summer, her work as a junior research engineer could be compared to that of a graduate-level researcher, not a high school student. Shivatmica worked with one of our research scientists to build the experimental infrastructure for evaluating a novel image generation algorithm built on diffusion models. She designed and built human evaluation systems, implemented scoring algorithms, built infrastructure for tracking experimental results, and documented her work flawlessly. Shivatmica is interested in the intersection of machine learning and math, as well as its interdisciplinary real-world applications. She’s particularly interested in how math is used “under the hood” in AI algorithms. In the past, she has worked on de-biasing word embeddings for physical appearance, cell tower clustering using parallel tempering, and modeling Intelligent Transportation Systems, and she has published her research at peer-reviewed IEEE conferences. She’s previously also worked on AI research at the Stanford Thrun Lab about using parallel tempering to enhance k-medoids clustering. In her free time, she enjoys reading and listening to music. Favorite children’s book: "Cuddles the Cow." 📖 Shivatmica, we're so lucky to have you back on the team. We admire your intelligence, learner’s mindset, and tenacity on any and all projects. One day after Ello IPOs, we're all excited to intern at your future startup(s)! 🚀

🇧🇷 We are so excited to announce the launch of our team in São Paulo, Brazil with the addition of these two incredible Unity engineers, Thiago L. and Micael Brito! Thiago and Micael have years of experience developing educational games together for kids at both StoryToys and FunKids. ❤️ Thiago is a Senior Unity Engineer with experience both in mobile and AAA game studios. He most recently joins us from Rockstar Games, where he worked on Grand Theft Auto VI. He graduated with a degree in Game Design from Anhembi Morumbi and went on to get his MBA in AI & Machine Learning from FIAP. Thiago is always looking for ways to bridge the world of game development and computer science. Apart from that, he enjoys board games, culinary adventures, spending time with his cats and partner, and a nice cup o’ coffee. Favorite children’s book: “Soldadinho de Chumbo” (The Steadfast Tin Soldier). Micael is a software engineer with 10 years of experience building mobile apps and games, primarily educational products for toddlers. He has worked with big names like Lego and Marvel designing systems, game mechanics, and using technologies like Virtual Reality. He lives in São Paulo with his girlfriend and 4 pets: two cats, a dog, and a bird. In his free time, he likes to play (and make) video games, reunite with friends to play board games, and paint miniatures. Favorite children's book: "Le Petit Prince." 👋 Welcome to the team, Thiago and Micael! Your leadership, talent, and years of relevant experience have created such a strong foundation for our São Paulo hub. 🚀