Ayah Bdeir is the founder of littleBits, an award-winning company with a mission to empower kids to be changemakers through invention and creativity.
-
1982
Born (Canada)
-
1994
Receives a Commodore64 computer and begins to learn programming
-
2011
Founds startup littleBits Electronics
-
2012
Receives TED Fellowship and presents her TEDtalk “Building Blocks That Blink, Beep and Teach”
-
2016
littleBits joins the Disney Accelerator program
-
2020
Inducted into the Global Business Hall of Fame
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to an entrepreneur and a banker, Ayah Bdeir was raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Ayah credits her parents for giving her a love of science, technology, math, and design and for not setting gender boundaries when she was growing up. As a child, Ayah loved to take things apart and see what was inside. By age 12, she had begun her first programming lessons on her Commodore64 computer. Since then, Ayah’s career has focused on making education and innovation more accessible and inclusive.
Ayah earned bachelor’s degrees in computer engineering and social work from the American University in Beirut, and a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. In 2008, she was awarded a fellowship at Eyebeam in New York, and she has taught graduate classes at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and Parsons The New School for Design.
In 2011, Ayah launched littleBits. The company, which invented the electronic building block, is the leader in education and science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) and has won over 150 awards in education, tech, and play. littleBits has also partnered with industry giants, including Disney, Pearson, and the New York Department of Education.
As an engineer, interactive artist, founder, and CEO, Ayah works to help children understand technology and use it to discover the creativity within themselves. In 2012, Ayah received a TED Fellowship and gave a TED Talk entitled, “Building Blocks That Blink, Beep and Teach.” Her work to get more girls into STEAM has been featured on TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes, by the World Bank, and at the White House. Ayah has been listed on the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Women, Popular Mechanics’s 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing the American Dream, Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Female Founders, and MIT Technology Review’s list of 35 Innovators Under 35.
Seeking to empower young people to become the changemakers of tomorrow by inspiring invention and creativity, littleBits partners with 20,000 schools around the world and, in April 2019, announced a partnership with Disney called Snap the Gap, an initiative that aims to help close the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.
“The risk that we run as a society of not understanding technology and the world around us, is that we become passengers in our life. We become passive consumers of technology. I really believe that it’s causing us to be less creative as a society and to be less adaptable to the problems that we have in the world.”
A Global Force for Good
Through littleBits, Ayah enables children and young adults to increase their creative confidence and become more adept at problem-solving. Understanding and working with technology helps young entrepreneurs become more innovative, enables them to build prototypes, and helps them access skills and careers in the tech field. Ayah believes engineering will shape the future, not only because there will be more jobs in STEM and STEAM, but because she believes the engineering mindset will shape the future. By providing the means for children and adults to understand technology and be able to work with it, Ayah is helping to reduce inequalities and enable more diversity in STEM and STEAM jobs.