About the program
My Journey to The Education Metaverse
When I was 8 years old, I got my first computer. It was a Texas Instruments TI99-4a desktop. I learned to code in Basic, and was hooked! From there, I got a Commodore 64, learned programming languages like Assembly, Basic, Fortran, & Turbo Pascal while in High School. Then I stopped.
But I didn't stop loving technology and computing. I joined AOL the day it came out, and still have my original email address. Every job I've had, I was the person others would come to for help with technology. Whether it was training a group of teachers on word processing in the late 1990's or experimenting with new tools creating unique opportunities for their application.
I ended up working for AIG out of college - SUNY Albany. There I worked for several years. It was a time before the internet was a place for businesses to thrive. It was more of a social venue. AI Credit Corp - the division I worked for, financed insurance. AIG had a program where if an employee made a proposal of an idea that the company adopted, they would get a percentage (I believe it was 10%) of the net profits.
I proposed that AIG's Insurance division and our finance department create a website to gain exposure, market our products, and make sales. The feedback I got was skepticism. The internet was not secure they said. I even found literature to that point on my desk one morning, left there by the CFO.
Could've would've should've. It's always been an idea that didn't come to fruition. You learn from experience, so when I had the idea to apply for a grant to start a program in the Greenwich Public Schools, I filled out that application, from the Greenwich Alliance for Education, and as I did my exhaustive research, my idea evolved and turned into something spectacular. It was a challenging journey that I am fortunate enough to still be on.