95: From Stanford to Start-Up- Audrey Wisch CEO, on Igniting Passion in Education with Curious Cardinals

Holly Owens (00:02):

Hello everyone and welcome to another fabulous episode of Edup Ed Tech. My name is Holly Owens and

DaNadia Johnson (00:10):

My name is Nadia Johnson. And we're your hosts.

Holly Owens (00:13):

We are so excited about the guest that we have with us today. We have Audrey Wish, who is the co-founder and c e O of Curious Cardinals. Audrey, welcome on into the show.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (00:26):

Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be speaking with you both today. Yeah,

Holly Owens (00:30):

We can't wait to dive into all the things about Curious Cardinals and I watched a little bit about, I try not to dive too deep. I want to really get to learn about it on the episode, but we're excited to have you and talk about all the things.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (00:44):

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Holly Owens (00:47):

Yes. So before we jump into all things Curious Cardinals, tell us a little bit about yourself, about your journey into this EdTech space and all that you've done so far.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (00:58):

Yeah, so that journey is intertwined with Curious Cardinals. I was a history major at Stanford and I thought I was pre-law with my 10 year life plan set and aspirations to be the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And I was sent home from Stanford. Stanford sent us home due to the pandemic and all of my extracurriculars were on pause and I was trying to figure out how to make the most out of this time. And so I started tutoring kids in March of 2020 and working with them observed how disengaged and uninspired they were with what they were learning in school and how they were absorbing and regurgitating what they were reading in a textbook, but they didn't know why they were learning what they were learning. So that inspired me to apply what they were learning in school to my own passions, to their interests, to what was happening in the world around us in hopes of igniting their imagination for what they could pursue or what they could get jazzed up about.

(01:59):

And that was a really effective way to spark a love of learning. And then one of the masks for math help, and I wasn't so passionate about math, so I texted Alec who was an aerospace engineer at Stanford, and Alec became my co-founder. Alex started applying what they were learning in math to how airplanes fly and fast forward, they told all their friends, and I am a super connector by heart. So Curious Cardinals was born when more kids were coming in and connected them to my most passionate peers. And now it's three and a half years later and we are a community of over 500 phenomenal college and recent grad mentors. I have a team of 14 amazing people working full-time, building Curious Cardinals with us and every day it feels like the journey just getting started. But that is a little kind of overview of the Curious Cardinal story because my entryway into education really happened by observing this pain point firsthand. And having been someone who's always my passion has always motivated me, inspired me, fueled my ambition, and especially in that gloomy time of the pandemic, it was the thing that kept me up every day and made me excited to keep Treking along even though we were sent home from my freshman year at Stanford. And

(03:17):

I think my co-founder and I are so different, but we're both very, very passionate and very committed to the things we love. And we were having conversations about how did we find those passions and how lucky we were to have found those passions. And all kids have that same potential, but it's really about whose potential has been tapped into. Or Hugh found that class that they thrived in or that mentor who believed in them. And so we wanted to make it such that every kid could have that chance and every kid could have that feeling of purpose, that passion can fuel.

DaNadia Johnson (03:48):

I love that story. Me

Holly Owens (03:50):

Too.

DaNadia Johnson (03:51):

The pandemic was a tough time for a lot of us, but definitely. Can

Holly Owens (03:55):

You say that again?

DaNadia Johnson (03:56):

Yeah, especially for students. So I love that difficult time birthed such a beautiful experience for so many students. So I guess I want to know that that story was super inspiring and amazing, but I want to know who inspired you along this journey of coming into building Curious Cardinals?

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (04:24):

Totally, so many different people. I can go on and on. I think one person's my co-founder because we are so passionate but we're so different from each other and we always kind of pushed each other to think differently to, and I'm kind of the humanities visionary gal. He is the operation stem use technology to scale, and so we've always pushed each other. And so I would say he's been a constant source of inspiration and I know he feels the same way and that's been so crucial to that journey is having such a great partner who fuels my inspiration, who pushes me and believes in me and vice versa and compliments me very well. It's important to surround yourself with people who have different skillsets, think differently about things because then you debate it, duke it out, and then you come to a point of agreement that usually required both of you pushing each other in some capacity.

(05:16):

I'm really grateful for our partnership also. It's interesting because coming back to that story, I would never in a million years have thought we would work together. That's the power of bringing people with different viewpoints and skillsets and superpowers together. And then it's been this community, these mentors are so inspiring. In the early days I was interviewing all of them and I literally was like, it would be selfish of me not to connect them. I'm again, the super connector urge in me, but I was like, one is more inspiring than the next. And the amazing thing, especially because it's really easy to be close-minded or think I wouldn't want to do that or that major is boring, but interviewing these people leading with curiosity, asking them why are they studying econ or why are they studying bioengineering or history or whatever it was made me have such an appreciation for so many different skill sets, tracks, passions.

(06:10):

And so that just, I wanted more kids to experience in that and I wanted more amazing young people to be able to join this journey and pave that pathway forward in different topics or different tracks. And then I think hearing the pain points of parents and students definitely has fueled us to keep moving forward, especially when we saw how effective our approach was. And then we're in the business of mentorship. So of course I have along this journey sought out mentors and there's been some really phenomenal people that I've turned to and have learned from. And I always say we, especially as such young founders, all we are good at is asking questions and learning and the resilience. And that's been so, so great to have these amazing mentors to turn to when we don't know, but we know to ask and we keep kind of trekking forward. So just a lot of gratitude. And then even the people who've joined this full-time team who who've been at other big companies with a lot of stability and not the kind of ups and downs that start up inevitably face and the fact that these people believed in us and joined, that's just so inspiring and we owe it to them to prove that we can bring this vision to life and continue to grow it.

Holly Owens (07:24):

Well, that says a lot about who you are. So commend you on that and the culture that you've developed at your company as well. And being, you said a young co-founder. I know you founded this at 19. I read that that's crazy. At 19, I was just figuring out my way through college, what

DaNadia Johnson (07:44):

Was I doing? What were you doing?

Holly Owens (07:47):

I wish I was thinking this stuff, but I was so worried about logging into the new L m s Blackboard in my sophomore year of college. But that's amazing in itself and I would love to be on the fly on the wall in some of your meetings between what you're talking about, the dynamics between you and your co-founder. I bet you there's a lot of inspiring conversations there.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (08:11):

And it's funny, I would say that, and I'm a New Yorker who moved to California, so some people call me the no BSS New Yorker. I'm very transparent. I say that feedback is my love language. I'm like, if I believe in you, I'm going to be honest and that's because I care enough to tell you what I believe you're capable of. But my co-founder and I are very much like that with each other. And I just think the level of trust and transparency is so I hope we can make that model for more relationships because it just makes it like we're just always, we believe in each other, we respect each other, we share this vision, but we're always pushing each other. And I think the tension's really healthy. I

DaNadia Johnson (08:50):

Love that all the moving parts kind of inspire you, not just the students and the mentors you're working with, but also the parents and the person that you are partnered with. I think that's awesome because I think I look at this supporting students as a triangle. It takes, it's not just one piece, it's not just the educator or the teacher, it's not just the parent, it's not just the student. It's all of the things that matter in supporting the whole child, the whole student, the whole person. So I love that you mentioned all of those and thinking about who inspired you along the way.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (09:31):

Thank you. And I could not agree more. That's one of the biggest things we observe is there's a whole ecosystem of support surrounding every child, or at least we hope that every child has, and it's their teachers, their parents, their coaches, their grandparent. There's so many people and as much as we can see it as this harmonious collaboration to support this child, the better. We're not working in opposition or intention, but rather we're all bringing it together to bring out the best in this kid. So yes, love that.

Holly Owens (10:08):

Audrey, tell us a little bit, you've been in the ed tech space now. I consider you an expert now, especially with all your accolades and everything. So tell us how you personally define educational technology. What does that mean to you?

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (10:21):

Yeah, this was an interesting question and especially as someone who I was not was a history major at Stanford, I was not one of those tech kids. And if anything I was tech opposed. That was some of that kind of healthy tension with my engineer, co-founder, always pushing more technology and again, meeting in the middle somewhere. And when I was so passionate about Curious Cardinals in those early years, I almost had this identity crisis. I was supposed to be a lawyer, what's going on? Am I veering off track? And then I did some deep reflection and I realized the reason I wanted to pursue that track was because I was very passionate about this idea of representing an individual and going to court and having systemic impact representing one person could have an impact that would affect millions of people's lives. That was really inspiring to me.

(11:14):

I always was torn between the kind of one-to-one impact versus one-to-many. And this felt like a way to capture both in a really impactful way. And then fast forward when I was having this reflection, I said at its core, championing individuality and having systemic impact and change, that's what we're going to do at a curious Cardinals just would've never in a million years thought of technology as the vehicle to enact that change. And so I say that because I am a believer in kind of demystifying the technology of it all and technology is helpful so long as it is human amplification, not human replacement. And that's how I think about opportunities with ai. That's how I think about tech in general, where a lot of ed tech platforms previously were automating inefficiencies, integrating things, bringing it together, kind of doing the same of what we were doing and bringing technology to it.

(12:06):

I think we're in this new era with AI where again, at its core, it's nothing revolutionary, but we can raise the bar for what we can teach kids what they're capable of, how we can personalize learning more, cater to their needs. And so that is a lot of how I think of education technology is kind of like era one being automating a lot of those in efficiencies and bringing them together. And this next phase is how can we use technology to personalize learning, improve learning efficacy, improve the opportunity to teach more effectively as teachers or mentors or educators connect people to people otherwise they might never have had access to. So I think it's just amplification.

Holly Owens (12:51):

I like that definition so much. And the thing about the human, you just said it, words sometimes chat G P T has to help me.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (13:02):

I don't know if it's age or that we talk all the time, I talk to humans all the time. But

Holly Owens (13:07):

Just how so eloquently said that and the tech like most, I know it's a very interesting question and it's hard to think about and it's intentional to have that question that people think about the technology is secondary to what the human is doing.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (13:27):

Totally. And I think I first heard that from Stanford professor Rob Reek who wrote a book called System Error where Big Tech went wrong and he wrote it with two other Stanford professors and he was the one I think who initiated the ethics and tech minor at Stanford. And so it just brings you to, there's a lot of questions to ask before you tackle change, whether it's we teach engineers to optimize, but for what are they optimizing, why are they optimizing? Is this actually improving humans' lives or making things more equitable or accessible or et cetera, et cetera. And I think to a similar, and you can think with K through 12 education, we can talk about so much that is broken and antiquated and not working, but at the baseline you kind of have to start with the philosophical question, which is what is the purpose of K through 12 education?

(14:16):

And once you can align on that definition, you could work backwards to evaluating where are we today and where do we want to be to fulfill that purpose? But I think there can be so much jargon in getting beyond that very basic foundational principle of it's human amplification, not human replacement, and use that as a lens to think about its powers and how we can integrate it to do better at what we all hopefully hope to do in the K through 12 education space, which is create opportunity for kids and support, empower kids to be their best self, to find fulfillment, to have the skills to thrive.

DaNadia Johnson (14:52):

Yeah, I agree. I love the way you said that, the amplification piece versus replacement. I think a lot of people feel that way, but the way you said it just was like wow. Yeah, totally. So kind of the part we've been waiting for is just to kind of dig into more of Curious Cardinals and what you do in the education space and how you kind of help to support organizations, institutions, students. Yeah, just tell us more about Curious Cardinals.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (15:26):

Absolutely. So Curious Cardinals, we connect K through 12 students to college and recent grad year peer mentors to help them unlock their potential. So there are four pillars that define curious. Cardinals are one year peer mentorship, two, passion-based learning, three project-based learning and four representation matters. So near peer mentorship, learning from a college student who's not too much older and aging yourself so they can set out the path where they got to and make it feel attainable. Our mentors also grew up on social media, also had their education halted by the pandemic. We get it, they get it. We speak the same language, the relatability piece is key. And my light bulb moment there was when I was mentoring my first student and she read my piece that was published in the Stanford Historical Journal and was like, oh my God, how did you write this?

(16:19):

And I looked at her and I said, you are so much further ahead of where I was when I was your age. Imagine where you're going to be when you're my age and mouth dropped, had a moment of I just saw the light bulb go off in her head and I was like, wow, this is the power I can really, I'm being wholly authentic. That is the truth. I can only imagine, have I learned all this stuff at her age where I'd be? And so we want to instill that sense of belief in a kid. And I think that relatability and proximity in age fuels that. The second pillar is passion-based learning. So we live in a hyper interconnected world, but so often teach in silos. And so we want to, sorry, if you hear my dogs in the background,

Holly Owens (17:03):

Mine will do it too. It's totally fine. It's an authentic conversation. We're all sitting at home and the dogs are here. We're good with

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (17:09):

It. Awesome, awesome. You can't control the barking. So anyways, I was saying we live in a hyper interconnected world, but often teaching silos and we really aim to take an interdisciplinary approach starting with what kids are genuinely interested in and helping them imagine a pathway forward that gets them excited. So maybe you love sports, you can learn sports analytics or sports journalism or you love fashion. You can learn the business of fashion or fashion and sustainability and really, as I said, validate who a kid is and help them imagine a pathway forward they get excited about. The other aspect of that is making the learning and the why of it all clear. And so often a student is like, why am I learning geometry or why am I reading Shakespeare? And in contrast to right now, I'm running a team and I want to make sure that everyone's day-to-day tasks which aren't always glamorous, connect back to that greater north star objective of where we want curious Cardinals to be in five years, 10 years, what our dream is here.

(18:06):

And you really have to garner that collective buy-in and make sure everyone knows the greater why. We don't do that exercise of garnering collective buy-in with kids in school. We don't tell them why it's going to benefit them to learn geometry or maybe the why of the reading Shakespeare. And not to say that those things aren't impactful, but it's so, so meaningful when you give a kid the opportunity to ask why and you engage in that discussion. Third pillar is project-based learning. A lot of our engagements though, not all culminate in project deliverables more than anything though, it's that ethos of project-based learning where I didn't take computer science in high school, not because I wasn't interested, but because I thought maybe you'll get a bad grade and it'll tarnish my chances of getting into Stanford, which is such a terrible reason not to try something.

(18:48):

But so often that fear of failure inhibits students from even trying. And so we aim to detach that fear and encourage exploration. And then the fourth pillar is representation matters. You are what you can see. I was one of the few girls in my honors math class, left a lot of confidence in stem. So when I failed that test whatever year of high school it was, I was like, I don't belong in this space. And I can't imagine how meaningful it would've been to have a female engineer mentor who told me, Audrey, it's not about your competence. You belong in this space. You're super smart. It's all about your confidence. You do not believe in yourself and could show me believing in herself and applying herself in a field that maybe didn't feel like for me looked like. So whether it's your gender, your race, a learning difference, you have an aspiration to be a college athlete, whatever it is that's most core to your identity, we want to match you to a mentor who you can see yourself in so you feel like you are capable, you are what you can see.

(19:42):

And so those are the core pillars at Curious Cardinals. And I would say another aspect of distinguishing what makes us so special is the quality of our mentors, the personalization of our matches and the fact that we meet you where you're at on your journey. So the mentors are the presidents of clubs, the winners of awards, the perm crop of college and recent grads. They're so phenomenal and we're really, really thoughtful in our vetting process and make sure that we have this high bar we maintain as well as in onboarding and equipping them with the tools and resources to be successful in their jobs as mentors and telling them that this comes with greater responsibility. Parents are choosing you as mentors because you are who they want their kids to be, and that's a real responsibility and there's a gravity to that and they take that with pride and responsibility.

(20:25):

The second aspect is, as I said, the personalization of the matches. We really, really pride ourselves on making the match really special. It's kind of like weird to say a dating app, you can, if you don't like your first mentor match, you can say, this is why I didn't feel like a good fit. And we'll make a second match. And match is really, really important of nine and a half out of 10 times though the match is great. So that rarely happens, but we really look for those unique nodes of connection, from identity to personality to interest to connect student to mentor. And then the third aspect is meeting kids where they're at, everyone's at a different place in their journey. Our goal is through the power of personalized mentorship to unlock potential. And so we have three tracks, kids who don't know what they're interested in and want to explore and figure it out, kids who have a passion and want to do something with it or have a dream project but don't know the steps to actualizing it.

(21:14):

And then the academic mentorship, the academic support. And for the exploratory journey, kids work with a mentor through guided exploration. And the hope is to give them that exposure, give them to space to identify an area that they might want to hone in on and really double down on. And then the passion project, someone might come in and say, I want to be a doctor. I want to launch a podcast. How do I get started? And so they'll work with the mentor to say, where do you want to be 12 months from now? Let's break down the steps. Let's turn project management, executive function, entrepreneurial skills, and let's bring this to life. And one of the extraordinary aspects of the passion project we've seen is a lot of kids haven't ever worked on something for a year or two years.

Holly Owens (21:51):

So

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (21:51):

Learning,

Holly Owens (21:53):

It's like a week, I

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (21:55):

Know your essays due on next Tuesday, your test is on Friday learning great things take time. It's amazing to see the confidence you develop from that experience and the conviction you gain yourself and also the resilience you build. Again, it's not that fear of failure of I screw up on the test and I get a bad grade. It's like, okay, this is a long-term project and great things take time. And so that's the second track. And then the third area is academic mentorship. We say that tutoring is the T word, like Curious cardinals because tutoring has this rigid connotation of being transactional, like a remedy for Friday's test or a quick fix. And where we've seen the best and most transformative results is that long-term consistent relationship. You meet weekly, not just when you have a pain that the test is tomorrow or the essays do, but when you're at the point of learning and developing and understanding and grasping the concept, learning how to apply it. And that's where a mentor can identifying the underlying root cause of a struggle, not the day before the test or when you're in that panic mode, but it's by building that relationship. And that's also where you can develop this rapport where when a mentor says to you, of course you didn't dwell on last week's test, you didn't study for it, and I'm only telling you that because I believe in you. And when a kid hears that from their parent, it's in one ear out the next. They do not want to hear that from that.

(23:13):

But when you get that kind of tough love, I call it candor with care from a mentor, the kid knows this person believes in me and I look up to them and I respect them and I don't want to disappoint them. And this offering, a lot of the major feedback from parents is like, you removed me as the nagger and it has saved my kids' relationship because it's really it's parent student. It's hard and it's really hard to listen to your parents, but you find this other person who can be that role model and tell your kid, I believe in you, and because I believe on you, I want to tell what you have to do to succeed. It can be really effective. And so that's what we do at Curious Cardinals. We're all about personalizing learning to support students to be their best selves through mentorship. And to get started. Parents have a consultation, call their team, we develop a really thorough understanding of their kid, get them matched, their student profile and then kind of opt to the races. But as you can hopefully tell, we really pride ourselves on being very thoughtful about the process to make sure that we're setting up for success in the most meaningful way.

Holly Owens (24:18):

You're dealing with the whole human here. And you

DaNadia Johnson (24:20):

Made

Holly Owens (24:20):

Me think a lot when you're talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you're really touching all those points when it comes to a learning setting. And I mean, goodness, I'm just like, I'm sitting taking notes, love. I know, me too. So

DaNadia Johnson (24:35):

Many students need this, so many,

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (24:39):

And I love you brought up Maslow's Hierarchy of learning needs. Our head of engineering said that we need our kind of own internal framework for it because it's some parents, they think like, oh, I don't know where I'm going to start. And it's like, what's your pain point? And someone might say, my kid lacks a lot of confidence in themselves and I want them to gain confidence and we'll guide you and based on what your pain point is, we'll help guide you in the direction of what's the greatest place to start. Or some people might say, want my kid to find their passion, but they don't have any time. And then we lead with curiosity. We try to figure out what's the core at that. And it's like, I don't think your kid's ready for passion. They're struggling with executive function and just kind of the foundation. I think that we should make sure they have a strong foundation, they know how to be a little bit more independent with their work, and they feel more confidence in themselves academically. Before we layer on that, so I love you brought up Maslow's Hierarchy of learning needs because a hundred percent you have to think of it in that vein and really meet a kid where they're at. Absolutely.

Holly Owens (25:35):

Absolutely. I love the personalization. That's something that's definitely needed in this industry and in a post covid situation because emergency remote teaching kind of traumatized everybody from K to 12 to higher ed. I mean, even up into the adult learning, it really did traumatize some people. So I'm glad you're doing what you're doing and you're doing a lot and you're offering a lot, but we want to know if there's anything that's upcoming that you can share. Not violating any N D A agreements, just tell us what's upcoming on the roadmap for Curious Cardinals.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (26:10):

Yeah, so lots of exciting things, especially for this amazing learner educator community you have developed. One thing I'm really excited about is how we're doing so much more to measure the efficacy of our learning experiences. One of the key things we're trying to teach mentors and students alike is how to set goals and how to actually execute on them and hold our community accountable to see through on the goals they set up front. So across the board, we're implementing smart goals, specific, measurable, measurable, actionable, realistic, time bound. And so that's one of the things too we're implementing on our platform is really making sure, okay, you are supposed to hit this goal by X point. Are we red, yellow, green? If we veered off track y and such an invaluable skill not just to teach kids, but also to teach mentors and holding them accountable.

(27:02):

So that's a really exciting thing we're implementing across offerings and just want to keep being goal oriented and make sure that every engagement has direction because that's where, again, you come back to that why are we doing this in the first place to find interest, to build a project, to bring something into the world, to learn how to make an impact, to see an idea through fruition. So that's something we're really excited about and a lot of the different tech features we're building to make this very personalized experience more repeatable and consistent across the board. We have an amazing education team, so lots of different kind of unique education tools we're building. One of the things we want to do is we really tell our mentors that being great mentors, like being a great leader, you set an agenda. What's our goal for today? What are we going to accomplish?

(27:47):

You build a relationship, develop rapport, you make expectations explicit, you hold someone accountable, you define clarity. All these things that really are just great leadership. And so all these things that we're implementing even to onboarding and ongoing training to continue upleveling our mentors who are already so phenomenal. And then we are really excited to continue growing. We're spreading the word as I shared, we were on the Today Show on Friday, so we're busier than ever. And so very excited to expand our reach. We're doing a lot more things too with our financial aid program to continue expanding access. And so more exciting things on the roadmap there to continue growing our financial aid program and embedding equity and access in the model as much. So a few things I mentioned, but so much that's the joy of just A few. Yes,

DaNadia Johnson (28:38):

Yes. Just a

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (28:39):

Few.

DaNadia Johnson (28:41):

Well, I know that you mentioned a little bit about AI and education and kind where education is going. So we kind of want to know to you in your perspective, what does the future of ed tech look like?

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (29:01):

I say that a lot of resistance to change in through 12 education I think comes from the fact that parents are a little uncomfortable with their kids learning so drastically differently than they did. They kind of think, well, we turned out okay, this must be right.

DaNadia Johnson (29:16):

And a guy walked up the hill to school seven miles, and I sat in a desk and listened to the teacher all day,

Holly Owens (29:23):

Congratulations. You had a terrible experience

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (29:28):

That, and the pandemic gave them a front row seat to their kids' education. It

DaNadia Johnson (29:34):

Did,

Holly Owens (29:35):

Absolutely.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (29:36):

And so I think we even saw the change going from why aren't you to kind of get it? You're struggling in a class or you're disengaged or this doesn't apply to your interest or you're so strung out about the test on Friday. So I think there's this real desire for change. You're wondering is there better options or is there more or is this really, I mean, mental health is at an all time high. Kids are more stressed than ever before. The human amount of parents who tell us how risk averse their kids are, how afraid they are to fail. And I think again, it comes back to that philosophical question of what's the purpose of K through 12 education? Are we really delivering on that? And I would say K through 12 education is a one size fits all solution. Of course there's many amazing innovative models in schools and incredible teachers, but just by design, how it's set up some of the many problems, equity and access, age versus ability based, progression, outdated education model, one size fits all, solution teacher preparation, support and quality, integrating technology, relevance of curriculum, social and emotional learning.

(30:41):

So just to name a few, there's lots of, I like to reframe problems as opportunities for us to bring forth something better. And I would say what I'm really excited about with EdTech is that we can embrace technology like AI and that can allow us to raise the bar. One of my, one thing that I keep coming back to is Albert Einstein said, don't memorize what you can easily look up.

(31:08):

Albert Einstein said that before our ubiquitous digital age, which just goes to show this isn't a new concept, this isn't new that don't remember, don't just teach rote memorization and absorbing and regurgitating, but you can teach kids how to think, what questions to ask. And so again, I don't think it's anything. It's about, again, kind of at the core, this isn't so crazy revolutionary, but I do think the technology presents an opportunity for us to raise the bar. And so I hope embracing ai, we can empower kids to learn not just what to think but how to think. We can empower kids to develop more mastery of skills and concepts. I think I always, with ai, which is amazing in my own work streams, I think AI is great either for idea generation or editing and refinement. And so imagine if when trying to teach kids to write, and I'll start with this by saying I have worked one-on-one, I've probably taught hundreds of hours of writing apply to interests, their interests, my passions to kids.

(32:08):

And the greatest problem I always confront is that kids conflate great writing with fancy words. And I was subject to that. I was obsessed with thesaurus as a fourth grader. I called it the thesaurus, and I used it words totally incorrectly, but they were synonyms in the thesaurus. So always when I'm working with kids, I'm like, what are you trying to say? And they try and they say something that doesn't make sense. And I'm like, we're at a coffee shop. You told me just chat and just tell me what you're trying to say. And this me to two things. Either one, they know what they're trying to say, they finally got it down. They just had to stop fixating on each word and sounding so perfect, or they have no idea what they're talking about. They don't know what the prompt is. They didn't understand the subtext of the book or weren't able to critically analyze it.

(32:56):

So I'm like, okay, we've got to work backwards a little bit, but we got this. And so that's, imagine if taking that, if there was a class teaching communication, effective communication, and you were allowed to use AI to generate ideas or put your bullet points together, but they're in class essays, you learn how to write emails too, because kids aren't taught how to write emails and they need the help seeing too many kids emails taught too many of them how to write an email too. And three, public speaking effective communication. So you can use AI for the substance, but you really have to learn the foundations of effective communication. Then imagine the critical thinking that analysis, you say, here's a class on independence of thought or creativity, and we can apply it to history or literature, whatever we want to. And you can use AI to polish your sentence or help refine your paragraph. But I'm evaluating you on the independence of your thinking. I'm evaluating on the creativity of your analysis. So I'm going to know if you use AI for that because the kid next to you will probably have a similar answer. And so we can just as I raise the bar and allow kids to get better grasps of skills and concepts. And it doesn't mean, as I said, kind of replacement or doing it so crazy differently. I just think we can do it bit so much better.

Holly Owens (34:12):

Yeah, 100%. And Audrey, you're so inspirational when you talk. I'm just super inspired right now. I'm right there and it's five o'clock here on the east coast and I are winding down. But I'm, what you're doing is vastly changing the landscape of education and the mentors and the community that you're developing around everybody. It takes a village, right? It's everybody has to be a part of this if we want to succeed as a whole and be this wonderful group of individuals and humans. And we love what you're doing and we're so glad you came on the show. So thank you so much for your time and being so inspirational. And

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (34:57):

I won't

Holly Owens (34:57):

Neglect to mention that you were one of Forbes 30 under 30. What year was it when you got that?

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (35:03):

2020 or 2020? 20. 20. I was 20. So it was 2020 or 2021. 2021. Yeah. Okay.

Holly Owens (35:12):

So right at the pandemic when you're starting things. So congratulations on that and we're definitely going to have everything in the show notes. You can learn more about Audrey Connect with her, curious Cardinals, everything there. So go to the show notes audience, and thanks again for your time in talking about this inspiring journey.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (35:30):

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for ending to reinforcing how important it's for us all to work together. Because we want to work with everyone. We want to work with the educators, the schools, the parents, the more we are more powerful together when it's we in helping kids be their best selves. So thank you for sharing me with your community and bringing me on your platform to emphasize that and our values too. And hope more people come along and join us.

Holly Owens (35:56):

They absolutely will. After this 100%.

Audrey Wisch (she/her) (35:59):

Thank you.