Our Team

Candice Chung is the Chief Financial Officer at AI4ALL, where she leads the finance and administrative functions.

Prior to joining AI4ALL, Candice served as Senior Director, Grants Management at the KIPP Foundation. There, she managed federal and private grants funding the development of new schools and supporting training programs for school leaders in educationally underserved communities. 

Candice is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and holds a B.S. in Commerce, with a concentration in Accounting, from the University of Virginia.

Pronouns: She/Her/They/Them

Born and raised in East Oakland, CA, daughter to a first-generation Mexican immigrant family, DD has first-hand experience of the challenges and inequities within the education system. Through mentorship and exposure to creating political street art, her passion for education was reignited. DD graduated from Mills College with a degree in Ethnic Studies, focused on Community Organizing & Social Justice.

DD brings a wide range of skills acquired through a diverse background in both nonprofit and for-profit sectors, with ample experience building and streamlining processes in areas such as recruiting, onboarding, employee engagement, and affinity programs. As a self-starter inspired by environmental and social justice, she sees the value of investing in individuals and providing meaningful support to improve the employee experience by lifting up diverse team experiences, creativity, and belonging. DD is dedicated to cultivating a human-centered approach through a race equity lens in all aspects of her Talent work and is enthusiastic about leveraging AI4ALL’s values to strengthen that commitment.

In her free time, you can find DD with her partner Chris and their dog Ruby driving along the California coast looking for surf and dog-friendly beaches or exploring new hiking trails.

Amir Golnabi is an applied mathematician, engineer, and educator with several years of experience in higher education as well as grades 9-12. As Training & Instruction Manager at AI4ALL, he is involved with the design and implementation of the College Pathways program.

Amir studied Mathematics and Computer Engineering at the University of Salamanca in Spain, before transferring to Montclair State University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 2007. He then started his graduate studies at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. His doctoral thesis was on “Computational Aspect of Tomographic Microwave Imaging for Biomedical Applications.” During his doctoral program, he also completed an Engineering Management Certificate at Dartmouth College. In 2012, he joined the Pulmonary Imaging and Bioengineering Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) with an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School. From 2014 to 2020, he was a faculty member in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Montclair States University where he taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate mathematics courses. Currently, he is also an Instructor in Mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Amir has a track record of peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and awards, including the Excellence in Teaching Award from the National Society of Leadership and Success. His engineering research interests include mathematical modeling, medical image processing, and AI. As a passionate educator, he enjoys interacting with students both inside and outside the classroom. His interest in education research includes educational leadership, curriculum development, educational technology, and deep learning. 

Amir loves spending time with his family, cooking, oil-painting, and listening to music.

Nicole Halmi is the Director of Communications at AI4ALL, where she works to make artificial intelligence more diverse and inclusive and to ensure that AI is developed responsibly. Before AI4ALL, she was an early team member at Neon Labs. At Neon, Nicole led communications and marketing and additionally managed the development of AI-powered, patented video publishing products. Before Neon, Nicole worked with underresourced young adults with developmental disabilities, supporting them to find meaningful work. Nicole received an A.B. from Brown University in Modern Culture and Media, where she focused on language and translation in the broader context of modern cultural and social formations. She has spoken about the need for diverse perspectives in AI at venues including Teen Vogue Summit, AWS ImagineEDU, and the IBM Executive Forum for Senior Education Leadership.

Beth McBride is an engineer, researcher, and educator. In her Data & Evaluation role, Beth works to maintain a consistent data pipeline that allows for sharing of data across AI4ALL programs, ensuring alignment across the organization on evaluation and data collection, and providing support for AI4ALL’s research partnerships and papers.

Prior to joining AI4ALL, Beth worked as an education researcher and curriculum developer at SRI International and UC Berkeley, developing integrated STEM curriculum units, conducting evaluations of curricular efficacy, and researching the use of AI in online education. Beth also previously worked with USAID in Liberia to develop curriculum and lead summer programs for high school students interested in engineering. Beth earned a BSE in Earth Systems Science and Engineering and a Masters of Engineering in Applied Climate Science, both from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and a Ph.D. in Science and Mathematics Education from the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she also had the opportunity to study Finnish and won a grant to do immersive language training in Finland. Beth is a Michigan native but now lives in Oakland, CA. Outside of her work at AI4ALL, you can find her dreaming of backpacking in the Sierra, decorating cupcakes, or at a public library.

Sean Peters is an engineer, educator, and entrepreneur with experience designing and implementing student-centered curriculum at the college and K-12 level. As the Director of College Pathways, Sean leads AI4ALL’s partnerships and programming strategies for attracting new college-level students to AI and supporting them as they continue their academic path in AI. Sean served as the curriculum manager and then the senior manager on the College Pathways team before stepping into the role of director. 

Prior to joining AI4ALL, Sean worked at the Center for Technology and School Change (CTSC) at Teachers College, Columbia University. There he trained and engaged teachers and administrators as designers of authentic, rigorous, standards-aligned transdisciplinary STEM learning experiences with meaningful technology integration.

Sean earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. Sean’s contribution to the field through his doctoral research focused on mitigating the impact of cyber attacks by defining a metric of privacy using Information Theory and designing an anonymously distributed communication protocol for cloud-based entities.

Sean is also the founder of My Body, My Kitchen, an online community devoted to empowering its members with the tools to take control of their wellness and fitness.

Emily is a dynamic leader in AI education and responsible AI, dedicated to promoting diversity and responsible AI frameworks in the tech industry. As the CEO of AI4ALL, she is democratizing pathways to AI careers and creating opportunities for historically excluded AI Changemakers. Emily is passionate about making AI work for humans, and believes that AI should be created by an ethics-informed, representative workforce. With a fresh perspective and a focus on impact and responsible AI, she is leading the charge to cultivate a new generation of AI Changemakers who will steer AI in the right direction.

Previously, Emily was the VP of Open Learning at AI4ALL, a program that brought AI education to more than 4,000 students in over 850 classrooms in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Emily was also the founding Director of Education at Girls Who Code, leading a team that taught over 30,000 girls to code and trained over 2,000 computer science educators. Before Girls Who Code, Emily was a Senior Cyber Security Engineer at the MITRE Corporation and has published research in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.   

Emily holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and a B.S. in Mathematics from Tufts University.

Thalea Torres is the Career Development Manager of College Pathways at AI4ALL, where she is building and supporting ways for AI4ALL’s college-age students to chart their AI career trajectories. She is passionate about working towards equity and justice for marginalized groups, and believes that AI and tech are areas for incredible social impact.

Thalea received her Master’s of Science in Social Work from Columbia University with a focus and minor in public policy. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. She has a background in youth development, direct practice, program management and development, research, and policy analysis. She has worked with a variety of populations including high school health education and workforce, foster youth and families, adults and children with disabilities, and English language learners abroad. Most recently she served as a Research Fellow for SAFElab, Columbia Population Research Center at Columbia University, where she collaborated with MIT and youth at the Brownsville Community Justice Center to create an immersive simulation training intervention for social media surveillance practices.

Thalea also loves fitness, superhero movies, and identifying every bakery within a 10-mile radius.

Diane is a Ph.D. candidate at Texas A&M University and a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Diane received her B.S. from Oklahoma Christian University in Computer Science and she is currently working towards a Ph.D. degree in computer science. Her research is focused on applications of motion planning algorithms in robotics and computational biology through topology-guided sampling-based planning.

As a student at Texas A&M, Diane worked to increase interest in STEM for K-12 students in Texas through the AggieStem program. She has served as president of Aggie Women in Computer Science, leading efforts to increase participation in Computer Science for women. She has also mentored undergraduate students through research, several of whom are currently in graduate school. 

In her free time, Diane likes to discover good stories in novels, documentaries, and interesting conversations.