Danielle Boyer

Born: 2000 or 2001

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: Native American Chippewa or Ojibwe Trib

dropped out of college to start The STEAM Connection

"“An antiracist future is a decolonized future, and this means addressing our power dynamics, we talked about representation, that’s awesome, but it’s very hard to gain footing when it’s representation in someone else's system and they have power there. We need to lead our own solutions for our own communities, and this looks like different things for all of us.” (danielleboyer.org) "When we lose our languages, we lose our culture, because we have many things like our medicines, we have things like our plants or animals. You can't really talk about that in English," Boyer said. "You have to talk about them in our languages. . . .And so, I think it is so important for us to be able to have access to learning our languages," )abcnews.go,com/GMA/Living/nature-american-inventor-danielle-boyer-combines-tradition-innovation/story?id=94101910) "Our peoples have always been scientists and inventors," she said. "I think when a lot of people think of Indigenous peoples, they see us purely in the past, as existing in the past, and they don't see our cultures and our communities surviving, existing, and thriving in the present. . . .When I create the robots, I want people to be able to see that we are creating solutions now for our communities, to uplift our communities based on the problems that we see," (also from abcnews.go.com); “I felt like I had to fight for respect that I’d never receive as a girl who loves robots. I created my organization because every child deserves to have a safe place to learn and grow and because STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education should be accessible to all youths.” (codesavvy.org); “People will still tell me that girls are not supposed to be in engineering,” Boyer says. “But my experiences taught me how to stand up for myself, fight for other girls, and fight for the changes I want to see.” (woc.aises.org); "

— Danielle Boyer

Field of Study: robotics inventor, youth education advocate

Institution/Corporation: The STEAM Connection; SOLIDWORKS; Dassault Systemes;

Degrees & Memberships: None found

Awards: 2022 Sustainable Practice Impact Award, VentureWell; named to Girls Changing the World, People Magazine; 2021 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize; Forbes 30 Under 30; 2021 MIT Solve Indigenous Communitees Fellow; 2020 Woman of Worth, L'Oreal Paris; Indigenous Youth Changemaker, Teen Vogue; Forward for Good Winner, Verizon; 2023 Echoing Green Fellow; 2020 Brown Youth Award; 2025 Next 50 Changemakers, Washington Post; 2025 Visionary Voice, TikTok; 2025 National Geographic Young Explorer; 2025 Monument Lab Fellow; 2024 Electric Forest Art Installation Plug-In; 2024 Webby Award; 2023 CS Hero; 2023 Woman on the Rise, Dell; 2023 Girls to Greatness Rising Star Award, EmpoweringHer Institute; 2022 Winds of Change 45 Under 45, American Indian Science & Engineering Society (AISES); 2022 Sustainable Practice Impact Award, Lemelson Foundation; 2021 ASA Prize for Equitable Education; 2021 Sequoyah Fellow, AISES; Volunteer of the Year , Labor & Economic Opportunity;

Achievements: founded the STEAM Connection in 2019 when she was just eighteen; creates equitable and innovative learning solutions for Indigenous youths with robots that she designs, manufactures, and gives away for free; her flagship invention is Every Kid Gets a Robot (EKGAR), an innovative educational robotics kit that costs less than $20 dollars to make and is sent to youth for free, increasing their technical competency and understanding with a culturally competent curriculum; her invention the SkoBot is a personalized, wearable, and interactive Indigenous language revitalization robot that senses motion and speaks; in partnership with her friend Kevin Villanueva, an augmented reality designer with Chicano and youth-led group Lucid Skies LLC, she developed a virtual version of the SkoBot in the form of an Instagram filter that people can interact with on their phones; started a volunteer elementary school STEAM program called Benzene Buddies; summer of 2020 with Dr. Joshuaa Allison-Burbank created the fundraiser Books for Diné Bikéyah to bring Diné books to Diné youth living in Navajo Nation during the pandemic; has written & illustrated a series of five children's books to increase diverse STEM representation for young children that is distributed for free by The STEAM Connection; 2020 invented Twenty an affordable, simple, and creative open-source robotics kit that was created to increase students technical learning at home; started a weekly newsletter and wrote at-home coding lesson plans for parents to allow them to be a part of the learning process;