Edtech Insiders Sparking Behavioral Change with Immersive Tech with Heather Shen and Mekalya Castro of Praxis Labs
Heather Shen is the CPO and co-founder of Praxis Labs. As graduate students at Stanford, Shen and classmate Elise Smith, 30, bonded over their mutual interest in helping companies and institutions do a better job at diversity and inclusion training. They came up with the idea for Praxis Labs, a startup that can deliver diversity training using either VR headsets, mobile phones, laptops or desktops. Heather is a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Education. Heather has also worked as a management consultant, an electrical engineer for Microsoft’s Hololens, and in Crew Systems at NASA. Heather holds a Master’s of Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Mekayla Castro is the Head of Curriculum at Praxis Labs, where she drives curriculum and content development and partners with the product team to create immersive experiences and impactful learning tools and pathways. Mekayla was formerly a Senior Behavioral Scientist and Head of Learning Experience Design at Edtech Unicorn BetterUp, which provides coaching services to enterprise clients, and was the Director of Global Leadership and Learning at American Express. Mekayla earned her Ph.D in Social-Organizational Psychology from Teachers College Columbia University.