Ayah (Aya on patents) Bdeir

Born: 1982

Country of Birth: Canada

Nationality: Canadian

Ethnicity: Middle Eastern

American University of Beirut BEng Computer Engineering & Sociology 2004; MIT Media Lab MS Media Arts & Sciences 2006

"“I am inspired by empowering people to invent.” (inventions.si.edu); "I identified with the “maker” label right away because I had been creating my whole life. I used to break open VCR players and gravitate to all things construction when I was a kid. My educational background was officially in engineering but I was always interested in how engineering could relate to other fields: social, political, artistic. I suddenly realized that there was a whole community of people with my interests — and I became addicted to it." (makezine.com); "There are decades of research that show that learning through play is extremely effective. It’s energizing to realize that littleBits is playing even a small part in helping students to connect with STEAM and find their “moment” — when they snap together a circuit for the first time and realize that they can create anything." (makezine.com); ". . .the best way to be a good community builder is to be a good community contributor." (makezine.com); "Today, and consistently over the past four years, 35%–40% of our user base is girls; that number is four times the industry average!" (makezine.com); "The risk that we run as a society of not understanding technology and the world around us, is that we become passengers in our life. We become passive consumers of technology. I really believe that it’s causing us to be less creative as a society and to be less adaptable to the problems that we have in the world." (businesshalloffame.org); "

— Ayah (Aya on patents) Bdeir

Field of Study: Inventor

Institution/Corporation: Mozilla; MIT; littleBits

Degrees & Memberships: Board Member of the Fund for Public Schools (2020)

Awards: 2012 TED Fellowship; 2014 was included in the 35 Under 35 Coolest Entrepreneurs, Inc; 2018 was featured in the BBC's 100 Most Influential Women list; 2014 was named to Popular Mechanics' 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing the American Dream; 2010 Creative Commons Fellowship; 2020 Laureate Global Business Hall of Fame; 2019 NY Times Groundbreaker

Achievements: In September 2011, Bdeir started littleBits Electronics, a startup with the goal to "put the power of electronics in the hands of everyone, and to break down complex technologies so that anyone can build, prototype, and invent."[9] The company is based in New York; littleBits joined the Disney Accelerator program in 2016; is a proponent of the Open Hardware Movement an initiative aimed at ensuring technological knowledge is accessible to everyone; coined the term "Electronics as Material" which is the idea of thinking of electronics as material that can be combined with other traditional ones; is a proponent of Gender Neutrality in toys