Founder, HelloMaker

Elsa Bosemark is a maker, artist, mobile app developer, and driving force behind Hello Maker, an online platform where elementary and middle-grade students can explore ideas through hands-on learning, become creators rather than consumers, and gain the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship and careers in STEAM. Bosemark founded Hello Maker in the summer of 2020, inspired by the struggles and inequalities of Covid-19 lockdown and a desire to share her passion for making and for helping students feel less isolated and be less passive. Hello Maker, which aims to be an accessible virtual maker community, hosts free weekly maker workshops for elementary and middle school students, develops kits, films tutorials, and partners with schools, public facilities, and non-profit organizations. It has teamed with SCRAP to create 30 kits and tutorials for underserved students. In middle school, Bosemark created a spelling app to combat her dyslexia that combined visual, auditory, and interactive learning techniques and has proven to help young children memorize challenging words and understand literature, and help ELL students learn English. This work led her to a leadership role with Each1Teach1, an afterschool tech program. During the pandemic, she and a team of four other high school girls created an app called SafeBites to help people find restaurants that keep customers and employees safe, which won the MIT App Inventor Hackathon. San Francisco-based Bosemark now attends a design-focused high school and intends to pursue an engineering degree. She is trained in Krav Maga, a self-defense system, and is a certified instructor teaching weekly classes.