Cecilé Sadler

Cecilé Sadler is a current graduate student and research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab in the Lifelong Kindergarten research group. Her work focuses on investigating how students of color develop their self-perception and cultural identity through computation and creation. Cecilé is interested in exploring how technology can be designed to create authentic and transformative experiences for minoritized youth to engage with their community through the development of new pathways and approaches to creative learning. This includes reimagining how computing can be taught in a way that amplifies voice and visibility of those whose identities who have historically been excluded from conversations of belonging. The core of her personal and professional interests lies at the crossroads of computing and education, and she seeks to design learning tools and spaces for exploration that empower students to envision liberatory futures for themselves and others. She believes in computing as a powerful social and political tool that can empower young people to transform and disrupt oppressive narratives if they are valued as experts of their own lived experiences.  Cecilé continuously seeks out opportunities to engage with young people and aspires to create meaningful experiences through technology designed for and with students who have historically been excluded from the freedom of playful learning and computing spaces. Through her research, she hopes to fuse critical theory and computing education with the intent of achieving a more equitable future for creative expression and identity development with technology. A native of Charlotte, NC, Cecilé earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer engineering from North Carolina State University and Duke University respectively. While at Duke she joined the leadership team of the Cultural Competence in Computing (3C) Fellows program, supporting program design and implementation.