About Us

Sebastian has set his sights on democratizing higher education with the founding of Udacity. Sebastian is a Research Professor at Stanford University, former Google Fellow, as well as inventor of the autonomous car and lead on various projects at Google X including Google Glass. Sebastian has been named the 5th Most Creative Person in Business (Fast Company), among the 50 Smartest People in Tech (Fortune), and highlighted in 50 Best Inventions of 2010 (Time).

Vish believes the time is now to make higher education more effective, accessible and useful. Prior to Udacity, Vish led high growth organizations at companies like Zynga, Yandex and Yahoo. Vish is a dog lover and aspires to become a scratch golfer but is a realist.

Shernaz brings over 20 years of experience building brands and consumer perception; advising executive management; scaling operational teams; and developing global businesses to take companies to the next level in marketing and mindshare. Over her tenure, she has worked with numerous companies including Netflix, Walmart, Motorola, Polyvore, Khan Academy, Zynga, Groupon, Kosmix and Baidu. She was the chief marketing officer and head of investor relations at Inktomi, a company that became one of the hottest Internet names reaching a $37 billion valuation. Shernaz started her career at Sun Microsystems with roles in the US and European offices.

She currently serves as an executive advisor to Google Ventures.

Oliver is committed to mobilizing education. He is an avid and prolific mobile engineer who joined Udacity in 2013 to bring the thrill and fulfillment of being an app developer to millions of students around the world. He started Udacity’s Grader program, which enables students to submit and receive human-graded project evaluations within two hours. Prior to Udacity, he was founder of Everyme, which was a part of the Y Combinator Class of 2011, and raised $3.6 million in funding. Among his proudest life moments was welcoming his daughter Daisy to the world in 2014.

Ryan believes that access to relevant, lifelong learning is the key to enabling people to realize their full potential. He’s committed to ensuring that Udacity’s financial and business infrastructure supports the accomplishment of its mission. Prior to joining Udacity, Ryan led finance for high growth businesses at Microsoft and Yahoo!.

Stuart believes that education is the single best tool we have to break through socio-economic barriers and has spent his career working to make education more relevant and accessible. Prior to joining Udacity, he co-founded Eduvant, making student data more actionable and accessible for K-12 teachers and schools, and worked with the Monitor Group and for Aston Educational Group, where he opened schools across China. Stuart is an avid trail runner, a novice surfer, first-time Dad who is finding the time to learn to program through Udacity classes.

Salwa is focused on cultivating lifelong learners and is fascinated by the impact that informal education has outside of the classroom. She has taught in Bangladesh, Uganda, and the U.S., where her students have ranged from preschoolers to adult learners. In addition, she has served as a director at Wellesley College, where she advised students about international careers, and has conducted formative evaluations for the popular PBS Kids animated educational TV series WordGirl. Her interest in educational media stems from her own early education learning from Sesame Street in Arabic, Bengali, and English.

Motivated by $30K in student loans, Kathleen joined Udacity in 2011 to help make education more affordable and useful to students all over the world. Having spent the better part of 3 years heading up the course development team building awesome learning experiences, she is now focused on getting graduates of Udacity programs new jobs they love.

Clarissa is an optimist about technology’s impact on education, having co-founded a K-12 start-up, and led digital change at Apollo Group. In her past life she led a contemporary dance company and was in management strategy with Monitor Group. After discovering CS101, Clarissa had so much fun learning to code that she wanted her kids to have that same opportunity in the future—so she joined Udacity.