Our Story
Explore our journey to a diverse and trustworthy AI future.
Transforming the pipeline of AI practitioners and creating an inclusive, human-centered discipline.
From our beginnings as a summer program for high school girls at Stanford University, AI4ALL has grown into a national nonprofit dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in artificial intelligence. Our mission is to equip historically excluded students with the skills, networks, and opportunities they need to become leaders in AI. This journey is driven by a commitment to creating a more inclusive, human-centered AI field.
Our story is one of innovation, growth, and a steadfast commitment to inclusivity in AI.
Since AI4ALL’s inception as an AI summer education pilot program for high school girls at Stanford University in 2015, the organization has supported students from historically excluded groups from high school through college and into their careers.
AI4ALL’s Launch and Early Growth
In 2015, Dr. Fei-Fei Li, Dr. Olga Russakovsky, and Dr. Rick Sommer founded a summer outreach program at Stanford University to familiarize high school girls with artificial intelligence. This approach sparked the launch of a similar program at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017, and, that same year, the founding of AI4ALL, an Oakland, CA-based nonprofit building an inclusive next generation of AI leaders. In 2017, Tess Posner joined AI4ALL as founding CEO.
Between 2015 and 2022, AI4ALL Summer Programs grew from one university partnership to 16 partnerships, allowing AI4ALL Summer Programs to serve a global audience of students from historically excluded groups, including Black, Hispanic and Latinx, and Indigenous students, women, and high school students with demonstrated financial need. Our data shows each of the thousands of students we served directly went on to educate, on average, another 13 of their peers, creating a global wave of change.
Innovating Education and Building New Pathways
In 2019, AI4ALL launched AI4ALL Open Learning, empowering high school teachers of all subjects to bring AI education to their classrooms through a free, adaptable AI curriculum and teacher resources. This curriculum focused on social impact, ethics, and interdisciplinary uses for AI, and made it easy for high school teachers to equip their students with future-proof skills. More than 4,500 teachers and students have used the Open Learning curriculum.
In 2020, AI4ALL launched AI4ALL College Pathways, an initiative designed to equip undergraduate students to make a direct and ethical impact on the AI field as quickly as possible. The initiative was designed to unite and uplift new voices leading and shaping AI, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian students, trans women, non-binary people, and cis women, low-income students, first-generation college students, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer students. It was AI4ALL’s first program serving college students, marking a transition from exclusively serving high school students.
College Pathways’ suite of programs created community, built on students’ academic and classroom experiences, and prepared students to enter an AI career or pursue further AI education after their bachelor’s degree with a nuanced understanding of the ethical and societal implications of AI. It launched with two pilot university partners, and grew to 16 partners over three years.
Accelerating College Opportunities Under New Leadership
In 2021, founding CEO Tess Posner announced she would be stepping back from the organization to pursue a career in music. In April 2022, AI4ALL announced Emily Reid, who had served as AI4ALL’s Vice President of Open Learning since 2018, as the organization’s second CEO. Emily’s background in computer science and her experience in computer science education at Girls Who Code prepared her to lead AI4ALL in its next phase.
In late 2022, AI4ALL announced a strategic pivot to focus on accelerating college students from historically excluded groups to attain internships and research opportunities in AI. As a result of the shift, all high school programming, including the Summer Programs, was put on hiatus. AI4ALL continues to share its wealth of experience and knowledge through K-12 initiatives like TeachAI, Hour of Code, and curriculum licensing with university partners.
In 2023, College Pathways programs were running in partnership with sixteen institutions, including Texas A&M University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Maryland Baltimore County. The team developing and implementing this facet of AI4ALL’s work had a tremendous depth of experience in curriculum development and computer science, mathematics, and engineering education. They combined that rich experience with a passion for responsible AI and its societal impact.
Igniting the Next Generation of AI Workforce Talent
In 2024, AI4ALL launched AI4ALL Ignite, a no-cost virtual accelerator designed to meet the needs of undergraduate students aiming to break into the AI field. Building on our wealth of experience developing programs for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and women/nonbinary students, AI4ALL Ignite distills the best practices from years of program development into an intensive, results-driven accelerator.
Students in AI4ALL Ignite develop a competitive AI portfolio project with mentorship from industry experts, ensuring they gain hands-on experience with real-world applications. The program also includes a student symposium to showcase their work and comprehensive training in career readiness, tailored to make them strong contenders for technical AI internships. By the end of the accelerator, students are fully equipped and prepared to interview for and secure AI internship opportunities, positioning them at the forefront of the AI industry.
