Taylor Seed's headquarters is high in the clouds above the streets of downtown Dallas – an appropriate location for someone running a tech startup that just won an international award.
“It's like the entrepreneurial Olympics,” Seed said with a beaming smile.
Shead is the founder and CEO of Stemuli, an interactive educational video game platform that tailors learning to each student's interests. The idea was born from Shead's observation that educational video games needed an update.
“There are a lot of platforms where our kids are learning, millions of kids are learning, and they seem to predate MySpace,” Shead said. “Stemuli is a platform that turns learning into a video game.”
Shade's tech startup, Stemly, was selected to represent North America at the United Nations AI for Good World Summit in Geneva, Switzerland last week, where it competed for the Innovation Factory award.
“So they decided that Stemly was the best use case of AI for good this year,” Seed said. “What I want to show in 2024 is that it's time to take women and minorities seriously, and this award couldn't be more fitting to show what that looks like.”
Shade is the first Black woman to win the Innovation Factory Award at the UN AI for Good Summit, against all male competitors, and she hopes her win will inspire other women and people of color in the tech industry.
“Because we're on a path to change the world,” Seed said.
Stemuli is used by the Dallas, Garland and Fort Worth independent school districts, as well as Stride, the largest online education school, which is backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Schade said.
