Sylvia Libow Martinez

A former aerospace engineer, Sylvia Martinez is co-author of Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering the Classroom, a book that has been called the “bible of the maker movement for classrooms”. She speaks and writes around the world to advocate for authentic learning using real world design principles, modern technology, and hands-on experiences. A popular international keynote, workshop leader, and consultant, Sylvia speaks on topics of design thinking and making, the lessons for schools from the global Maker Movement, innovative schools, STEAM, and gender issues in technology. Sylvia weaves examples from present day schools that use technology, especially computational technology, in authentic ways with her own experiences from the real world of work in game development and aerospace engineering.

Before this, Sylvia was President of Generation YES, a non-profit organization evangelizing student leadership for tech-savvy youth for over a decade. Prior to this, Sylvia oversaw product development, design and programming for consumer software, video games, and educational games at several software publishing companies.

Martinez started her career as an electrical engineer designing high frequency receiver systems and navigation software for GPS satellites.

She holds a master's in educational technology from Pepperdine, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from UCLA.