Dr. Abigail Edgecliffe-Johnson

Abigail Edgecliffe-Johnson is the founder of RaceYa, an educational technology company that is building the next generation of creative thinkers. RaceYa uses fun, fast, customizable radio-controlled cars to teach kids about the power of iteration and persistence through science. 

Abigail has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. An expert in communication and human behavior, with more than 15 years of commercial and academic experience of large-scale research projects, she founded RaceYa to teach kids how to turn failure into productive, creative problem solving.  In her spare time she is a confectionery roboticist making moving, blinking and occasionally exploding cakes.

She is a regular speaker on UX design and testing; the challenges for girls in STEM education; the understandings of gender that infuse how we encourage children's play; and the complexities of crowd-funding and crowd-investing. She and RaceYa have been featured in multiple publications including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Alley Watch, and on Good Morning America, PBS and Cheddar TV.