Heidi A. Olinger
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Pretty Brainy

Heidi_A_Olinger

Heidi A. Olinger is an edu-preneur and the author of Fashionably Mashed®: The STEM of Fashion Design. For teaching excellence she has been honored by the Boettcher Foundation and others. She is the founder and chief executive officer of Pretty Brainy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and social enterprise that designs STEAM curricula to inspire and prepare girls and young women to innovate, problem-solve, and lead in the 21st century.

With more than 16 years’ teaching experience in K-12 and higher education, Heidi has been an instructor for the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L) and was honored in 2012 when InnovatioNews named Pretty Brainy “an educational leader for STEM education.” Her education includes degrees from the Universities of Wisconsin and Colorado and post-graduate work at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Future of Learning Institute at Project Zero. Her 2014 TED Talk is about adolescent girls in science and math, and she tweets about girls in STEAM via @prettybrainy.

Expertise

  • Girls in STEM and STEAM.
  • Diversity and inclusion in Education.
  • 21st century learning.
  • Writing pedagogy.