Meet the Ponder team

Alex Selkirk
Founder

Alex Selkirk founded Ponder Labs in 2011. He holds a BA degree in Political Science from Yale University that involved enough engineering to help him get a software job in Silicon Valley after graduation. Later, at Microsoft, he helped design data systems to manage security patching decisions for 400 million Windows computers worldwide. When he left Microsoft, he started a data engineering consultancy, and Ponder grew out of that work, as the team began to focus on supporting data-driven instruction and school operations.

  • Stuart Little

  • Lego Galaxy Explorer

  • Commodore PET Basic

Gabriela (Gaby) Ochoa
Product Manager

Gaby is a Product Manager with a background in project management and data analysis in the education and technology sectors. She holds a BA in American Studies and Education from Occidental College.

After working in classrooms across the U.S. and abroad, Gaby joined Ponder in 2023. She remains deeply committed to advancing educational equity and closing the achievement gap by delivering innovative, high-impact solutions through her role as Product Manager.

  • Where the Wild Things Are

  • Building a (small) homemade BMX ramp

  • R

Owen Losse
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Nuntinee Tansrisakul
Creative PM and Advisor

Nun has a mixed work experience including 5+ years of consumer research & marketing consulting, and 5+ years of creative production.

At Ponder, Nun advises, designs, and creates creative materials for Ponder Paper. Her work is informed through her close partnership with teachers, school operations teams, and the central school network.

Emily Lin
Designer and Advisor

Emily is a research-driven graphic and interaction designer who transforms complex systems into clear, engaging experiences. She blends design and technology to create digital products, data visualizations, and immersive experiences that make complex ideas more accessible and meaningful.

Tony Gibbon
Lead Engineer

Tony builds instructional solutions for Ponder Labs, most recently focused on tooling to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of teachers' student work analysis. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.

  • Grover and The Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum

  • A tool to plan a long trip without overstaying

  • Java

Chana Meyer
Developer

Chana is a full-stack Software Developer. With a background that includes studies in biology and art, and a successful career switch after a web development bootcamp, she brings a unique, user-centric perspective to the team. Chana is passionate about detailed work and assembling complex components into intuitive tools—a skill sharpened by hobbies like collage and stained glass. Her focus at Ponder is creating intuitive, accessible interfaces, ensuring the applications schools use to manage and interact with their data are built for clarity and maximum impact.

  • A Wrinkle in Time

  • A social network app that connects dog owners, dogs and dog-parks.

  • JavaScript

Katie Parlante
Open Source Lead

Katie Parlante joined Ponder Labs in 2025. She holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, where she also taught introductory Computer Science. After graduation she worked for a series of Silicon Valley startups, one of which was acquired by Netscape. She worked for Mitch Kapor at Open Source Applications Foundation, which was chronicled in the book Dreaming in Code. Her most recent project was running a team of data engineers and data scientists at Mozilla, supporting the Firefox browser and other initiatives. Katie joined Ponder because it brings together her interests in responsible use of data, open source, and positive educational outcomes.

  • Watership Down

  • C Otter — clone of Karel the Robot with C syntax (senior project)

  • Think Pascal

Egor Tarasenko
Data Engineer

Egor is a Data & AI Engineer who started his career working as a private math and computer science tutor during his adolescence. He discovered that explaining complex concepts to students was just as rewarding as building systems to process them. Before joining Ponder, he contributed to various open-source projects and worked across data engineering and AI implementations. At Ponder, he gets to combine his passions: advancing computer science through practical data solutions and improving education outcomes; two missions he's been committed to from the start. He still believes the best way to understand something is to try to teach it, whether to a student or a machine learning model.

  • Naruto (Manga)

  • A voice-controlled racing game where your car's speed was determined by how loudly you screamed; an early exploration of alternative human-computer interfaces, or possibly just an excuse to make a lot of noise.

  • C#

Erendirani Aparicio Chavez
Curriculum Specialist

Geoff Desa, PhD
Evangelist and Advisor

Geoff was the first professor to use Ponder in his classroom. Over the past year, he's provided invaluable feedback about his usage while evangelizing Ponder to colleagues and administrators. He is an assistant professor of management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University and a member of the Sustainability Group within the College of Business where he teaches Business & Society, Strategic Management, and Social Entrepreneurship.

Geoff's research examines resource mobilization and venture development in the technology and social entrepreneurship sector. He earned his Ph.D. in Business from the University of Washington in Seattle with an emphasis in technology entrepreneurship, strategic management, and public affairs. He is on the board of our sister organization the Common Data Project, a 501(c)(3) social venture committed to democratizing access to data.

Erendirani has been an educator for over 10 years in urban centers like LA, the Bay Area, and Brooklyn, as well as throughout California's Central Valley and Central Coast. They earned a BA in Chicana/o Studies and Education at UCLA and their MA in Teaching with a specialty in Spanish Critical Bilingual Education. Erendirani believes in the power and duty of education to empower students and families, and that purpose-centered drive has brought them to Ponder where they are excited to join the team as a Curriculum Specialist, supporting teachers with meeting the unique learning needs of the students they serve.

  • Trabalenguas (A Spanish tongue twister book)

  • Building makeshift musical instruments

  • HTML

Team of Advsiors

Mimi Yin
Designer and Advisor

Mimi has been designing collaboration systems for a decade, first for the workplace and now for the classroom. Throughout that time she’s been pursuing answers to the same questions: How can design influence social interplay and group dynamics? How do you "engineer" an environment to enable a group of individuals to achieve more than the sum of its individual members? How do you provide structure and goals while also nurturing the individuality that drives achievement in the first place?

Over the past year, these questions have taken on new-found urgency and relevance in education. Mimi shares that it’s been an exciting process applying lessons learned from enabling workplace collaboration to today's classroom.

Edan Maor
Lead Engineer and Advisor

Edan is an entrepreneur, with 15+ years of experience in Software Development in various industries (networking security, Web, 3D CAD / CAM and computational geometry, machine learning). Edan currently runs Hipposys, a Data Engineering / Big Data / Scientific Python consultancy, and consult on digital business strategy.

Edan previously founded and was the CEO of Purple Bit, a Python Consultancy, which was acquired by Autodesk in 2014. At Autodesk, Edan led the software team in the Applied Research Group, which focused on computational design, computer vision and 3d printing, and was the Product Manager for a browser-based 3D CAD software.