Developing a suite of apps to deliver high quality children's books to families around the globe

Learning to read is hard. It's even harder if you can't access reading material in your native language. In many regions around the globe the deficit of children's books in these local languages is acute. NABU aims to solve this fundamental access problem for global literacy by creating and distributing bilingual books via mobile platforms.

As Head of Product & Technology, I led the Community, Learning and Innovation program at NABU, integrating community engagement, research and technology development in order to create offerings that truly speak to the needs of new readers and their communities.

Managing a team of engineers in Bulgaria and the United States, we rebuilt the NABU mobile apps, developed a custom book creation CMS and launched the organization's first web app. New features like karaoke-style audio narration have been delivered and are now serving readers in dozens of languages in Africa and beyond.

As a wearer of many hats at NABU, I also managed a team of country managers in Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines, Romania, and Rwanda focused on community engagement and outreach. I worked on a number of research and data projects utilizing the app data, surveys, and user interviews. And I lead efforts to better structure and measure the learning outcomes of the reading app. Together, direct community engagement, in-depth research, modern pedagogy and technology development combined to make improvements to NABU's core offering, resulting in a growth of active usage of the app.