Digital Pond: EP#1 Elena Sinel — Empowering Teens with AI

We’ve known Elena for a few years now and have been luckily enough to be invited to join her hackathons as guest speakers and judges in the past. During our chat, we discuss how Elena first became drawn towards the world of AI technology, the challenges and opportunities the pandemic has provided, and her vision for inspiring young people to proactively use technology to make a positive impact on the world.

You can now hear the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, as well as many other major platforms. You can find the full transcript for the podcast is below.

Make sure to subscribe to the Digital Pond, we’ve got some fantastic guests in the world of technology, innovation, software development and entrepreneurship lined-up, including our next guest Harpal Singh.

Transcript

Danny Bluestone

Welcome to our Digital Pond podcast. Today, we’ve got Elena Sinel from Teens in AI. How are you doing Elena?

Elena Sinel

I’m great, Danny. And thank you so much for having me.

Danny Bluestone

Pleasure, as always. It’s been, I think about, more than a year now since I came to one of your great events, where Cyber-Duck have really enjoyed mentoring and judging. We’ve had people like Sam Hooper from our side coming into mentor and me judging.

So it’s really, really impressive in terms of what you’re doing, especially because it’s AI, it’s such a brand new cutting-edge force in the world that we live in. And especially because you’re helping teens from all sorts of backgrounds.

So tell me why you’re doing what you’re doing and what is the journey to date? How have you ended up getting where you are?

Elena Sinel

Well, first of all, yes, it has been a while. I think last time you judged our hackathon, it was the Brexit hack.

Danny Bluestone

Oh, yes it was.

Elena Sinel

This was a Brexit hack, and we challenged teenagers to come up with some interesting solutions to the problems that we will be experiencing when Brexit hits us. That was a while ago now. And we’ve had some great successes since then. We’ve run many more programs. I think right now we have already worked with more than 6,000 young people across the world. And many more are learning about the programs we’re running.

But it all started for me personally five years ago when I realised something needed to be done in the education sector. Because my daughter then only just started secondary school, which I think to me was a shock to my system a little bit because primary school was, you know, fun, and she was happy and she was very engaged in very, sort of exciting, learning where the entire school would be learning in a really fun way. Project-based learning, you know, was completely, completely different. And the moment she entered secondary school, it turned into almost a preparation for exams that would be taken in three years.

So it was death by exams from the moment she walked in. I was warned, in six months you won’t recognise your daughter. I saw this was a great thing. It was a good warning. I thought, okay, I’m looking forward to that, but it wasn’t really what I expected at all. Because six months later I asked Victoria “What are you doing?”.

“Oh, um, you know, my teacher said, if I don’t take these exams, if I fail those exams, My life is basically over. So I really need to prepare for these Math’s exams or English or whatnot”

And that’s three years before she has to take those exams. So this is when I realised, wow, what are they preparing my daughter for? This shouldn’t be like that at all.

So I know your kids are still a little bit younger. Mine is already 18, but like I said, I was just so shocked as a parent that the school system hasn’t changed. They’re still preparing our kids for just passing an exam, factory style. And I felt probably a rebellion, and I wanted to change something. I wanted my daughter to have a better future. So I thought, all right, I’m going to show you how we learn in the real world.

And it’s really not how we do things in school. I started taking her to hackathons. I started taking her to networking events. And one of the hackathons I was invited to was Product Hunt as a participant. And I thought, oh, that’s a really cool one. So I took my daughter with me and we were hacking in different teams. I was in one team, she was in another team. My team won, her team lost. She was hating me for a month, but still asking, “when is the next one, I want to go again”. And I think what I saw in my daughter was just a transformation in two days, where she was working in a team, she was learning how to code. She was learning how to do design thinking. She did some work on logos.

So she was really part of the team doing lots of random tasks that she never gets to do in school. And she said, “oh, mommy, you know, I wish school was like that. That was really fun. That was different”. And I thought, well, okay, that’s interesting, maybe school should be like hackathons.

When kids learn together, work together, collaborate and innovate and really use that knowledge for something purposeful. I think that’s the thing that I found. Why is it that we’re still teaching kids how to do Maths and English and Sciences, and there’s no purpose to it? And kids are coming out wondering what the hell is this real-world about. It’s really not what I was learning in school, it’s actually a lot more complex. There is stuff in AI and IOT and some other really fascinating stuff like design thinking.

And this is when I thought, okay, let’s run the first hackathon. And I ran it in 2015. With just 70 kids. They came from Camden, UCL Academy and some other schools from Tower Hamlets. And I thought, okay, let’s just do something creative. And I was literally inventing on-the-go because I had no idea how to run a hackathon and what should be in a hackathon.

And I thought, all right, on-the-go, um, design thinking, what the hell is design thinking? Better find out and learn about it. And then I said, okay, this is really cool. This should be in the hackathon. What’s agile, what’s, you know, project management. I knew nothing about this world. I just literally had to become an expert in every single framework that I teach to the kids.

And that happened really fast because I had to teach them something that I knew would be valuable. I brought in a lot of industry mentors. This is how I also found you. I said, I need somebody who would teach design thinking in a way that they really know what they’re doing, and they can teach young kids aged 11 to 19, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

So I literally had to vet everyone. I had to speak to Sam and all of the other mentors to really understand. There’s one thing to know what design thinking is. And there’s another thing to teach it to adults. And there is an absolutely different layer of how to do it for kids. How do you teach kids what design thinking is?

You know, IDEO have designed this incredible framework and methodology. But people struggle to teach it to an audience that has never, ever done it.

So by just learning about all these frameworks, becoming an expert in each one of these. Bit by bit. I thought it would be really cool to reinvent how kids learn, and how kids learn in a way where they can create something that is purposeful and meaningful. And after the first hackathon, to be honest, I thought I never ever want to do it again. It was a lot of work to put together such a big event with 70 kids and another 50 mentors. Speakers, judges and everyone else. I felt that was exhausting.

But turns out five years later, what I found was really exciting back in 2018 was AI technologies, which was just becoming a buzz. And I just jumped on this opportunity. I thought what’s AI anyway?

There was a teenager that came to me who was feeling very suicidal — and on the verge of committing suicide — and he literally came to me, asking me to help him. To save his brain because he had this incredible mind. And he said, “Elena, um, you know, I’m a threat, quite a risk to myself. I can’t go to school. There was nothing I can do. Can you give me something to do like something enjoyable, anything, you don’t even have to pay me anything, just let me do something to help you, because I can’t do anything at school” and I’ve said, “what’s your passion?”.

He said, “it’s AI. I’ve been coding since I was, you know, 11, 12. And then last couple of years, I was exploring artificial intelligence and data science”.

I knew nothing about it at that time. I said, “all right, fine. If you want me to help you, I need to know more about what you’re passionate about and where your passions lie”. And we ended up in 2017 running our very first hackathon in mental health because I really wanted to help this boy.

I challenged him to design the whole program for me. I said, “you bring the AI experts that will mentor the kids. You show me what this is about and where the potential is. Sell it to me.” And he did. I got really excited. I brought IBM and lots of other organisations onboard and we did this really incredible hackathon.

And then in 2018, United Nations found out that we’re teaching AI and data science to kids, they thought, Oh, wow. That’s interesting. How is she doing this? They invited me and I used this as an opportunity to launch a proper movement because I felt it was necessary that this technology is available to everyone, even as young as 11/12, because they’re so capable kids.

That’s how we launched Teens in AI. Since then, yeah, everything else is history, you know, 6,000 kids and counting.

Danny Bluestone

It’s a fascinating journey. And I know that you’re working with both first world and third world countries. And you’ve got a big emphasis on diversity, both in terms of gender, race, and obviously people from different backgrounds, like impoverished communities.

Is that correct?

Elena Sinel

Yes, absolutely. In fact, in the latest hackathon, we had 130 kids and the winning team was from Syria. And I absolutely didn’t expect even kids from Syria to find me, but one of the mentors was in a Facebook group where one of my team members shared the event. They found me, they reached out, they said “we’re in Syria, we have an AI club here, in this little town”. I said, “wow, that’s incredible, what do you do?” And they showed me the 10 kids that they have worked with. And I said, “well, wouldn’t it be amazing if these kids have an opportunity to connect with other kids in other parts of the world”.

And so there are 130 kids coming from Kazakhstan, from Nigeria, from Kenya, from UK, Europe, US and Syria, spending the whole week together trying to tackle issues around mental health and climate change and education. And we’re always aligned with the United Nations, sustainable development goals. And that was really fascinating to watch how kids really work together across different time zones.

So yes, we do somehow manage to find these kids, or rather they find us because everything has become so virtual. So it’s the advantage of living in the times of COVID.

Danny Bluestone

Cool.

What lessons have you learned along the way since you started building the business? Because obviously you started from nothing. You’re hugely entrepreneurial, which is amazing. It’s obviously very rare for small businesses to be able, or individuals to start a small business, and keep it going for five years. That’s a massive accomplishment.

So, what are the main things that you’ve learned, and I guess you wished that you would’ve done differently if you had the knowledge that you have now, five years down the line?

Elena Sinel

One of the things I always recommend to early-stage entrepreneurs who are still trying to figure out, or wondering, what to do is, first of all, find a real problem and solve it. Second, find something that really defines your purpose in life. Something that you’re really passionate about.

So for me, if I was just doing a nine to five job in some corporate company or some other company working for somebody else, it’s not something that would keep me there for long. The reason why I get up every morning, 6, 7 AM, is because I know that every single email I send, every single phone call I make, or zoom call I have, is going to change somebody’s life.

That’s pretty much it. I’ve always wanted to make a difference and make a dent and do something impactful, that really matters to me.

The third thing I would recommend is, learn to ask for help. I think this is something I still struggle with, because it’s just that you think, or you feel, you can do it all by yourself or alone. And then I find I’m really burnt out tired, exhausted, and that I’ve just been robbed. But I know Danny whom I can just call and ask him how to hire my next Business Dev because you know, Danny has done it many, many times. Why can’t I just call Danny? Should’ve called Danny and asked him it’s, it’s this kind of feeling like, oh, I can do it, I’m sure I can do it. And then you spend 24/7 trying to tackle this. And, you know, business dev is something I do all the time, but still, maybe, I’m not excellent at negotiating or whatnot. Maybe I should have a call with somebody who really does it for a job. Just does that sales, sales, sales or, HR questions, or whatnot.

I would Google for hours and hours to try and figure it out by myself when I could just reach out to my network and say, I know Katherine, who is a top marketing, an expert, maybe I should ask her how to do this.

Yes. I struggle with this sometimes. So I would say, just ask for help. Find somebody who you really admire. Somebody who is a couple of steps above you, and say, “I want to be where you are. How did you get there, please? Can can you have a twenty-minute conversation with me?”

And just, I think those kinds of things is what entrepreneurs probably would really benefit from. And sometimes we are fearful or just feel like, okay it’s my journey I have to do it.

Danny Bluestone

That’s great advice for people who are considering starting a business or early-stage entrepreneurs.

Obviously, you have an incredible network. I see your network whenever I come to your events and online as well now. What sort of tips can you give to these entrepreneurs about building a network? How did you go about building yours?

Elena Sinel

I think the reason why I have such a big network of people who are really sort of aligned, I suppose, with how I think and what I do is… because you again it all goes back to your mission and your purpose. I think when you are really onto something that you believe in, other people reach out to you. Other people start believing in you as well. So I think it’s very important to have that purpose defined. Because whenever I speak in conferences, people believe in what I have to say, and that’s why they reach out. They want to connect. They want to have that conversation. To then tell me how I could perhaps help them.

And this is really all going with what do you, as a founder, believe in and what values you have, what foundations you have, and when people are aligned with these, they will reach out and they will want to have that conversation. I think that’s probably the best way to build the network.

Danny Bluestone

Cool. And obviously, you mentioned that when you first started, your daughter’s story, which is fascinating. Why do you think AI was the thing that you picked?

Elena Sinel

Mmm, it wasn’t so much AI. People think that all we do is teach kids AI, but it’s not. What really the idea is, and what the company does is, we empower young people to change the world through technologies like AI. But we’re not your typical coding school, where we just sit kids and teaching them how to do AI.

We don’t really do that. What we teach kids is how to think and how to solve problems. Because what we need in the future is leaders and innovators and people who can solve real problems. And just learning to code is very, very limiting. So we focus on a holistic program, where we don’t just focus on AI skills.

It’s not really that hard to teach kids Python or data science or, you know, TensorFlow and whatnot. What is much harder is to teach kids how to think. Because, unfortunately, it’s not what schools teach. They really don’t teach kids how to think outside of the box, how to think laterally, how to work in a team, and how to solve a real problem.

That is our USP. Not so much the technology itself, because the technology to me is just an enabler — an enabler of something positive I hope. And that’s why everything we do is under a pinned by ethics. So, not only do we teach AI, and that’s probably something that we’ve introduced recently Dan.

In the Brexit hack, we didn’t really talk about AI ethics, but right now we talk about it in every single program. We talk about racial biases. We talk about gender biases, we talk about algorithmic biases. And we find resources like Ted Talks that really highlight these issues. So we really do bring to front all of the issues that we’re currently experiencing with technologists that are being deployed and developed, without really giving enough consideration to the ethics. To what happens to data, to the privacy and everything else. So that’s really, I think the important part, and I do think ethics should be taught in every computer science degree and really should be embraced in schools.

It’s also one subject that girls, in particular, are really drawn to. Sometimes girls assume they’re not that technical. But the moment you talk about racial biases, the moment you talk about human rights, this is where I feel so many girls are really drawn to the subject of ethics in AI. I get approached a lot of times by students asking me:

• “Can you please give me some advice on writing an EPQ about AI, what subjects should I talk about?”
• “I’m really drawn to racial biases because I am from the BAME community.”
• “I’m shocked that there was this technology that was developed that didn’t recognise black people just because of the colour of their skin”.

So I have these engaging conversations coming from girls. Students who are fascinated by this topic and are just curious and want to change something.

So ethics is an important topic for teachers in every single program, every single campaign. And I really am a strong believer that it should be part of every school curriculum.

Danny Bluestone

Yeah. I completely concur. Ethics in AI is so important at the moment, particularly because, whilst it’s obviously complex to do it properly the tools are out there now in people’s hands. And there’s a lot of stories out there of tech companies that have either created AI or are about to release AI and actually realised, look, if it’s going to get into the wrong hands, this could be catastrophic, and used kind of in a malicious way, whether it’s against communities, countries, people. There’s been plenty of examples in the corporate world of there issues of this.

So, as it’s becoming easier to deploy AI, the ethics behind it are absolutely paramount.

And obviously, it’s fascinating at the same time to learn that girls are attracted to the ethics of AI. When I came to your hackathons before, I think the Brexit one, it was great seeing so many female AI hackers there.

Obviously, it’s becoming difficult to get people in a room together. So how are you finding this new reality that we’re in, our new normal? And what do you think is going to happen afterwards?

Elena Sinel

Well, the last face-to-face was in Paris, in March 2020. And that was just before the lockdown was introduced. And that was fun.

Just before that, I signed a contract with Microsoft to run a roadshow, going from one country to another. I think the contract I signed was for six countries, or six cities, and we were meant to go to Malta, to Netherlands, Italy, and lots of other really exciting places.

Prior to this, myself and Microsoft, have gone to parts of the U.S, and then Warsaw and then Bucharest, and the plan was really to go forward and expand this program to 250 countries. And the program was really, specifically focused on girls, but that all stopped in March.

So, unfortunately, that was the last program.

This was International Women’s Day as well, in March. This hackathon was happening in six cities simultaneously, orchestrated by us. It was meant to happen in 13 cities, but it got interrupted by COVID.

So we’ve had our challenges. But I thought, okay, never-mind, we just have to pivot and see what we can do online. And I remember the first call ahead with my team during the lockdown. I said, “okay, well, I’m not really used to working from home, but we have to, we don’t have a choice. I know many companies are going bust or finding it really, really difficult to pivot. We can, and the last thing I want is to fire anyone. So we need to figure out a way to go forward”.

And we did.

We explored every single online platform we found. Discord seemed to be safe and secure. It’s a games platform, kids love it. Maybe this could be an online virtual environment we use, and we said ‘what’s stopping us?’.

We started running hackathons online in Discord. We’ve run four programs since COVID. The first one was very impromptu/improvised. It was youth versus COVID, something we didn’t expect to run, but we thought there’s nothing for young people and everyone is struggling. Parents were moaning. I was moaning like, how am I going to do this with my son jumping on my bed, literally in front of me. And, you know, my daughter is also moaning because she’s 18. That’s what they do. She doesn’t want to be at home stuck. And I’m like, okay, what am I going to do?

And, yeah, we had a hackathon. We had 270 teenagers submit 70 projects. They’re all live, amazing, amazing ideas. Trying to really tackle COVID related issues and it was incredible. Things related to domestic violence, things related to mental health things, things related to education, because schools and teachers were struggling to begin with.

If you remember, it was such a shock to everyone system. And we challenged kids, we said, “what do you want that world to look like, how can we solve these challenges? I mean, you’re struggling, everyone else is”. And it was just fascinating.

This was the first one. It was a 12-day long hackathon. We thought it would give them a bit more time because it’s a bit difficult to work in an online environment when you’re not used to it.

And since then, as I said, we’ve run three more. The latest one was a Ada Lovelace hack with 130 kids, in the summer we ran our Accelerator also online. We extended it to another week, we introduced a Bootcamp so that we could teach kids the technical stuff first and then did our classic Accelerator program afterwards. And that was also phenomenal. We had 300 applications just for 45 places — usually, it’s 25, we increased it, we thought online, maybe we could scale up and make it bigger.

So we had 300 application, and most of them came from Africam and Arabian communities, in the UK and Europe, as well as from African countries. We had people from Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, you name it, Fiji. Yeah, lots of different, really interesting countries.

And so the 2020 cohort, for the accelerator was very, very diverse. I was very pleased with that. And the outcome is so much richer when we have diverse teams working together, you know, boys, girls, different age groups, and also different abilities — so you don’t even need to be a coder to participate in our program. You just need to have a passion to change the world. That’s all really.

It’s been an exciting journey, I would say challenging, but exciting. I’ve seen this as an opportunity. I think we as entrepreneurs, we kind of are trained in our minds to think, okay, it’s challenging, but there is always an opportunity. What can I do? How can I breakthrough, what can I do differently? And right now, when somebody asks me, “okay Elena, face-to-face or online?” I say online, of course, because the moment it’s online, you have so many more people who want to join and want to participate. Even with mentors, we have mentors who participated from Singapore. From China. From India. You know, it was incredible. And I love this kind of diversity — and also all-new diversity. We have kids now who wouldn’t normally come to a face-to-face hackathon. Maybe they have autism or Aspergers or ADHD, or other incredible abilities. So for me that these are unique kids. We just can’t reach this kid offline because they’re either shy or sometimes have a physical disability preventing them from participating. Whereas with online, all you have to have is wifi and a laptop. And that’s it.

And neurodiverse children, they find it much easier to participate this way. They don’t even have to have their cameras on because we don’t insist on this. When we have webinars or whatnot, classes on zoom, nobody needs to even turn the camera on. They can be in their pyjamas in bedrooms and, and it’s great. It works for them.

So it’s been really interesting to see kids particularly referred by camps, who also found this so beneficial. We have a lot of amazing feedback from parents saying, “wow, my kid gets bullied in school because he has autism. But in this environment, he thrived. It was great. He felt so confident he had a role to play and he was so proud. That was amazing.”

So I actually quite embraced it and I said, ‘well, with online, we can literally make it happen in any part of the world or even better bring all communities together’.

Danny Bluestone

So it sounds like that, the end-users, all of these kids all over the world, are benefiting a lot more now because of it. I guess, because of the pandemic. Obviously, it’s not something that you anticipated, but it sounds like its impacted your business in a great way.

Elena Sinel

Yeah, definitely. There’s a lot of interest. A lot of demand.

I mean with our business model, we always, always keep our events free or heavily subsidized so that they are accessible by anyone. Anyone can tune in as long as they have access to wifi and a laptop.

So we prefer working with corporates who pay sponsorship to be part of this program, to have a chance to mentor. And also, you know, we have had a lot of HR directors who would reach out and say, “I want to offer a meaningful experience for my data science team. So that in terms of COVID when it’s really tough, and all they have to do is work everyday in front of their laptops doing their work. They can’t go out, they can’t travel anymore. So, an experience like this when they can tune in online and help a child learn about some basic data science skills or AI skills makes them feel great. And that makes us feel great as a company.” So these are the companies we work with who will find it beneficial for their employees.

And also, obviously, brand awareness is always a bonus as well. If they can recruit from our incredible pool of talent, that’s always a plus as well.

But we found it really… it seems like it is beneficial for the mentors, not only in terms of their mental health, but a lot of mentors say, this is a learning and development opportunity. They say I’m learning as much as the kids are learning because we sometimes have a design thinker from, let’s say Cyber-Duck who doesn’t understand maybe much about data science. So they have a chance to also learn some other skills. And then a software engineer from Quantum Black, who perhaps doesn’t know much about design thinking and they have this cross-pollination of ideas and skills, and that really benefits them — ‘so well, I don’t really know much about design thinking because we have a design thinking department, you know, they do design thinking and we just do all data science and software engineering’. We found it’s amazing when we bring so many different expertise onto the table and they all learn from one another.

And not only from one another, but also from teenagers and also from the most incredibly inspiring speakers that we have. And we really tapped into top experts in the world. We’ve had somebody like Regina Dugan, who is well known for her work in AI and ethics, who would be tuned in from Sweden to do 20 minutes or half an hour talk.

I could never possibly get Regina to a face-to-face event. Never. Because she’s such a busy woman, you know, or we would get somebody like Amy on a podcast. Amy, she leads on the work in AI and robotics. We interviewed her today on a podcast, but I couldn’t possibly bring her into London or go to the Netherlands to interview her.

Online allowed us to tap into the greatest minds in AI, data science and ethics. It has been incredible and the teenagers love it. It’s the kind of inspiration that is needed in their lives right now.

Danny Bluestone

Fascinating. So we’re almost out of time. Just one final question.

How are you going to move forward? What are the opportunities that you’re looking for, how can Cyber-Duck help you? And where’s your roadmap, what are you looking for in your next phase of growth?

Elena Sinel

So we’re definitely set to scale.

We’re hiring at the moment for a Business Dev to help us with operations as well. We are looking into making our campaign in March bigger. Really tapping into distributors for hackathons. We have got teenagers themselves now who want to run these hackathons. We have companies who reach out who want to take our framework and run these hackathons for teenagers. So we see us scaling in that way, where we will have lots of hackathons and we will just manage and see how well they’re doing.

So we are looking for sponsors who could sponsor it, align with our vision and who will benefit from this kind of exposure because of IWD (International Women’s Day). This is a massive event for every woman in tech. We are also looking to forge a partnership with the NHS. So potentially we are looking into teen accelerator with NHS Tavistock and Portman Trust, where it’s really teenagers themselves developing solutions for mental health, which is very, very powerful and a very unique partnership.

So that’s what we’re developing as well.

And in addition to this, our summer program, which is our flagship program, is going to be running again in July/August. This is what we’re well known for, which is like a Y Combinator slash DeepMind for teenagers. And it’s really exciting. We will make it hopefully bigger this time, definitely expanding into other countries. We’re launching in France in January, so keep an eye on what’s going to happen in France. This is a really exciting development. We’ve also launched in Brunei. So this is our foray into the South-East Asian market. So we’re having some conversations with South Asian clients. Also exploring, the Middle East with conversations in Amman, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

So there was a lot of interest.

We are definitely hiring, and getting this technology and this program into the hands of many teenagers hopefully, either through teachers or through governments and whatnot. So lots, it’s going to be a very busy year. I think the keyword for this year is team building. To build a really strong team to make this happen because scale is our priority, and we want to make sure that as many teenagers across the world learn how to create AI for impact and understand how this technology works. Because the more they do understand how this is working right now, the better opportunities the will have for future careers, and opportunities to see their potential and find their purpose in life.

In the same way, as I have found mine.

Danny Bluestone

Fascinating. So Elena, thank you so much for attending this Digital Pond podcast by Cyber-Duck. You and I need to catch-up properly.

Thanks again. Have a great rest of the day.

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