Letter from the Founder
I.
My high school didn’t have computer science classes, so I learned how to code by teaching myself HTML. Even after studying computer science at MIT, those first HTML websites taught me the single most valuable lesson I’ve learned from computer science: you can build anything. And if you don’t know how, you can figure it out.
At the time, I thought I was learning how to nest HTML tags. I was actually learning the confidence to dream and the persistence to execute. I dreamed up choose-your-own adventure games about potatoes and websites about Conway’s game of life. And when I didn’t know how to build my dreams, I learned to be resourceful and persistent (and use Stack Exchange) to get there.
Next, I dreamed of a world in which students could learn the same lessons I had. How could a thousand students, across the world, learn to build their own websites? My answer was the nonprofit Bit by Bit Coding. In four years, the Bit by Bit team reached students in 8 countries and 21 different states — and we reached a lot more than a thousand. Our students built more than just HTML: their websites helped pets get adopted and connected students with sustainability initiatives. They dreamed, and they executed.
II.
Today, the dream I’m building is Momentum.
We’ll be moving the needle on education by giving students around the world the confidence and tools to build their own projects and forge their own paths.
We empower students to envision how they want to see AI in the world, and we give them the problem-solving skills to actually build it. In the future, whether our students go on to make AI models or films or companies or literature, they’ll take away the confidence that they can build, and the resourcefulness to create in the face of uncertainty.
Now is the time. We taught AI before ChatGPT dropped in November 2022. ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months (faster than Whatsapp, Twitter, and TikTok), making it the fastest growing consumer app in the world. Everyone knows about AI — and they’re keen to understand it.
AI is here and it’s here to stay. As AI is used in credit scoring, agriculture, ad recommendations, hiring, fraud detection, and beyond, we need a representative body of scientists architecting our future. We’re the ones preparing students and educators for a world that’s fundamentally underpinned by AI.
III.
In the wake of the pandemic, AI4ALL unfortunately had to stop their high school programs. We’re the last free AI education program for high schoolers.
High school is critical: women who are exposed to computer science in high school are 10x more likely to major in it in college. The world needs more high schoolers learning to build.
We’re defining Momentum’s inception and what it’ll look like in the years to come. I’m excited for the future we’re creating!
~ SZ