Nancy is a design-thinking enthusiast and a world-recognized leader in the implementation of school Fabrication Laboratories (“Fab-Labs”). The focus of her work, especially with the Transformative Learning Technology Lab at Stanford University, has been the ways in which digital fabrication impacts learning.

Nancy co-founded FAB!, a non-profit in Mexico, which serves underserved high-schoolers and teachers, and she has researched the efficacy of her programs in collaboration with Stanford. This year Stanford is supporting Fab Lab implementations at 5 public high schools in Guadalajara, and they are looking to implement 50 more next year.

As part of the Beam Center NY and Active Emergence (which she also founded) she has designed Project-Based curriculum, worked with teachers and learners to create environments that are student-centered, and promoted hands-on learning in schools around the world.

In Spain, Nancy led the implementation of the first FabLab@School in Barcelona and supported the creation of a fully integrated curriculum. The research paper about this project, “Barcino, Creation of a Cross-Disciplinary City,” which she wrote with Paulo Blikstein (Stanford Professor and Portfolio School advisor), was accepted by the prestigious Interaction Design and Children Conference in 2016.

In Brazil, Nancy led the training of teachers from different parts of the country on how to implement digital fabrication in their schools and transition their schools’ design to a student-centered classroom.

In China, Nancy was invited to Shanghai to consult with the top-ranked high schools on the implementation of Fab Labs and Project Based Learning, and to train their teachers how to integrate a Project-Based Learning approach.

Her research in Mexico and Barcelona have been accepted at several international conferences. She holds a MS from Stanford in Learning, Design and Technology, and she was a software engineer in her previous life.