Molly Wilson
d.school d'Arbeloff Fellow 2011-2012
When Molly, then age 10, and her grandmother, age 70 – two peas in a pod when it came to curiosity – took a Photoshop class together, Molly realized she could make anything she could imagine. Many fabric scraps, blinking lights, paint-stained fingers, messy spatulas, and stray pixels later, she’s still obsessed with making anything and everything.
Bit by bit, Molly learned that her favorite creations were those meant for other people to experience. Her grade-school book reports were full-blown participatory class exercises, much to the amusement of her teachers. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in history of science, she worked as a UX designer for Harvard’s academic technology group. It turns out sitting at a screen all day wasn’t her cup of tea, so she began to zero in on teaching as a career. She student-taught in New Hampshire and Norway before launching into teaching high school history in Pittsburgh. Along the way, she gravitated towards educational technology as a way to leverage her nerd skills and bring new kinds of craft and depth to teaching, and she eventually came to the d.school while earning her master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology at Stanford School of Education.
When Molly first set foot inside the d.school, she found something she’d always dreamed of: the place where teaching and making meet. She loves being a part of a crew of independent-minded collaborators who are passionate about crafting learning experiences. At the d.school, Molly focuses on teaching, curriculum, and expanding the reach of design thinking in education.
