Meet our team

Growing up in Syria Shawki created his own nontraditional educational experience and, now he's trying to help every kid create his own by building stuff at Primer. Before Primer, he built crypto projects and wrote software for startups.

Stephanie studied theatre and creative writing and has worked in entertainment since 2010 with experience spanning children’s theatre, fashion week, concerts, television, and international Broadway tours. She's passionate about using that experience to design compelling educational experiences and foster fellow creators.

Connie has never grown out of children's books and sometimes writes essays. She enjoys learning languages and staring at paintings in her free time.

Eric has spent the last ten years building software for organizations as large as the Federal Reserve and as small as brand-new startups. He studied economics and math at Arizona State before winning the Thiel Fellowship.

Lucas is a high school student from NYC and is enthusiastic about learning and teaching web development. When he is not creating awesome homeschooling experiences at Primer, he is teaching young programmers javascript at a local non-profit.

Elizabeth has designed learning experiences at Khan Academy, Lambda School, and UC Berkeley. She spends her free time analyzing fashion shows and giving unofficial tours at art museums.

Aivant designed and taught courses on software engineering from the ground up while studying computer science and education at UC Berkeley. He has a passion for creating engaging learning environments and loves exploring new ideas in the education space.

Bojan has been writing (and occasionally fixing) bugs since 2013. He studied computer science at MIT and worked at Coinbase before joining Primer. As a kid Bojan fell in love with learning through the Math Olympiad programs in Macedonia.

Gonzalo has been building software for Apple platforms since 2013. Prior to joining Primer, Gonzalo studied computer science at the University of Florida and worked at Airbnb.

Emily has taught young people in public and private schools and adults in corporate environments. She studied math and computer science at Columbia.

Phil loves exploring the outdoors, playing video games, and geeking out over science. He studied physics at Yale, worked as an engineer at SpaceX, and is passionate about teaching science and engineering.

Prior to starting Primer, Maksim worked as a software engineer and engineering manager at Coinbase. He studied computer science at MIT.

Ryan was homeschooled from Kindergarten through 8th Grade, and started Primer to help homeschool his own kids. He's spent the last decade building tech companies at Square, Gumroad, and Omni.