I'm Makēda, an educator, researcher, and innovator committed to how students, adults, and families learn. I'm Alaskan, based in Berlin. My work lives where school, work, and the future meet.

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I hold two Bachelor's degrees and a Master's in Education from Stanford University, an Executive MBA, and I'm currently completing a Master's in Futures Research at Freie Universität Berlin. Alongside that formal training, I've been designing, teaching, and consulting in the digital world of work since 2012. That mix of academic depth and real-world experience has taught me that how people learn is inseparable from how they live, feel, and make sense of our rapidly
changing world.

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My work centers on the everyday capacities that both schools and workplaces need to succeed: strong executive functioning, clear thinking, adaptability, creativity, and the ability to stay steady when things get complicated. These grow with wellbeing, curiosity, and a sense of belonging.

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Through Quest Labs, the tools and community spaces I'm building, I design playful, hands-on programs for students, parents, and educators. We use games, big questions, and embodied exercises to make hard things feel doable and shared. Playing with how we learn is how hard things becomes shared.

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