About Us

Meet Our Brand

We are team CiSpIre/Discover. We wanted a brand name that represents each individual of the team as well as our brand promise. As a result, we came up with CiSpIre in which the uppercase letters represent the disciplines of each member of the team: C for Computer Science, S for Sustainability, and I for both Industrial Engineering and Interior Design. The word as a whole is also meant to symbolize our brand promise to inspire. The logo was created to extend on our brand name by incorporating symbols that represent our disciplines. The colors of our logo were chosen to depict the four main colors used in schools: blue, red, yellow, and green. Our goal is to create a fun, interactive, and engaging learning environment for the students of the future to be excited to take charge of their education.

Our team strives to be sustainable by doing more with less, create an exceptional experience for students, build a safe learning environment, be creative and open-minded, be respectful and honest, embrace diversity within the team and community, be committed to our brand promise, encourage innovation and growth, be collaborative and helpful, and embrace achievements and challenges. We promise to bring inspiration in innovation to every student. Our objective is to combine our specialties to be applied to this educational classroom building endeavor. By doing so, students and teachers will be benefited.

With the addition of 4 new team members in Spring 2023, a rebrand was necessary to include all of our majors! Team Discover now includes "Design, Industrial, Sustainability, and Computer Science" to keep the same acronym concept, and goals, as the original team name. Our colors also changed! We now adopt a nice cool tone scheme to signify the calm and collective manner in which our ideas and work flow.

Meet The Team

Fall 2022 Founders

Aida Sanie

Hi, I’m Aida Sanie. I am studying Interior Design at Arizona State University and I consider myself a set designer. I have experience with managing my business, creating art, and working on renovation projects. I want to be part of The Innovation Space because I am a motivated and hardworking person and I'm passionate about what I do. When I was a kid, I remember thinking almost every day that I wish I could change school to a more enjoyable place. Now I'm here to make a difference to the future educational workforce by utilizing my experience as a product specialist at a furniture store and doing interior design projects. I'm thrilled to collaborate with my team and develop solutions to ensure that the upcoming educational workforce is joyful for all students.

Erika Wong

Hi there, I’m Erika Wong and I am a Computer Science major at Arizona State University. I am skilled in programming, data science, and logic-based design and bring a unique perspective as a cross-pollinator between computer science and innovation design. I am here to fulfill my honors thesis credit and I am looking forward to working with so many passionate, multidisciplinary individuals. Next Education Workforce really caught my eye as I am a teacher's kid and know how hard it is for educators in a 30:1 student-teacher ratio with limited budget, support, and respect. Thus, I hope to be the change that will revamp what we think of as a "classroom".

Flor Zavala Rivas

My name is Flor Zavala Rivas, I am a senior majoring in Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University. I am skilled in performing data analysis, problem solving, and project management. Having these skills will be beneficial to the team thus staying on track is a critical component when working on a project. The InnovationSpace projects were two of the many options for my capstone project. After reading about the Next Education Workplace project, I knew I wanted to contribute to it since I enjoy problem solving and finding ways to improve systems and processes. Working on a collaborative, multidisciplinary project will allow me to broaden my perspective on different areas like education, design, and sustainability. I will gain a lot of knowledge by working with students from these different backgrounds. Being able to help shape the learning environment of our next generation of students is exciting and something I really look forward to.

Michael Gallegos

Hello, my name is Michael Gallegos and I major in Sustainability, specifically sustainable energy, material, and technology at ASU. I also study biomimicry, use systems thinking and I consider myself a cross-pollinator and a hurdler. Nature has been around for over 3.8 billion years, living and growing sustainably. I use those years of knowledge/experience to help solve human based problems. I was interested in working with a collaborative team to design something for future generations. Next Education Workforce gives our team the ability to use our years of knowledge in our fields to create a safe, fun and collaborative education environment. Growing up I would often think about how much classrooms negatively affected my mental health and now we get an opportunity to create a space that welcomes the next generation to learn, express themselves, and collaborate with peers.

McKayla Katz

My name is McKayla Katz. I'm going to school for Interior Design. I believe I have a lot to offer because I'm tolerant, considerate, tenacious, and eager to pick up new abilities. I put a lot of effort into taking the initiative, finding solutions quickly, and genuinely supporting my teammates. People can discuss more topics, find solutions to issues, and complete tasks more quickly when a large variety of team members are present. Working with individuals from various fields enables you to address the entire issue or problem. Growing up, I wasn't given the tools to succeed in school. My sophomore year of high school, I was diagnosed with ADHD and multiple learning disabilities. I want to use my experience and knowledge to help students know how they learn and get individualized assistance, as well as an improved learning environment.

Spring 2023 Members

Erika Wong

Hi there, I’m Erika Wong and I am a Computer Science major at Arizona State University. I am skilled in programming, data science, and logic-based design and bring a unique perspective as a cross-pollinator between computer science and innovation design. I am here to fulfill my honors thesis credit and I am looking forward to working with so many passionate, multidisciplinary individuals. Next Education Workforce really caught my eye as I am a teacher's kid and know how hard it is for educators in a 30:1 student-teacher ratio with limited budget, support, and respect. Thus, I hope to be the change that will revamp what we think of as a "classroom".

Flor Zavala Rivas

My name is Flor Zavala Rivas, I am a senior majoring in Industrial Engineering at Arizona State University. I am skilled in performing data analysis, problem solving, and project management. Having these skills will be beneficial to the team thus staying on track is a critical component when working on a project. The InnovationSpace projects were two of the many options for my capstone project. After reading about the Next Education Workplace project, I knew I wanted to contribute to it since I enjoy problem solving and finding ways to improve systems and processes. Working on a collaborative, multidisciplinary project will allow me to broaden my perspective on different areas like education, design, and sustainability. I will gain a lot of knowledge by working with students from these different backgrounds. Being able to help shape the learning environment of our next generation of students is exciting and something I really look forward to.

Sarah Price

Hi, I'm Sarah! I am a Master in Visual Communication Design student at ASU, scheduled to graduate in May of 2023. My Bachelor's degree from University of Oregon is in Psychology with a minor in Computer Information Technology. I enjoy experience design (exhibit, displays, museum) as well as working with typography, photography, books/publishing and pops of color. For my graduation capstone project, I am focusing on nature, the classroom, and the intersection of the two. This project is important to me because of the interdisciplinary component. I have always been adept at communicating between groups of people who do not know about each other - in order to bring the problems and solution suggestions to light. I hope to continue work like this after graduation both in a design context and a psychological context.

Lazlo Montanaro

Hello, I am Lazlo Montanaro, I am a senior majoring in Environmental Design at Arizona State University. I am knowledgeable in sustainability, agriculture, construction, and the natural world. I am in the Innovation Space program in order to fulfill my credits and hopefully accomplish the goal of graduating with a college degree. This project was very interesting to me because I am the child of a teacher and have heard firsthand how disffucult classroom structure can be for education.

Reydan Freitas

I am pursuing my bachelors degree in Industrial Design at ASU, with a minor in sustainability. I have an appreciation for product design, ranging from furniture and home goods, to automotive and consumer electronics design. I want to dedicate my career towards creating practical and sustainable designs that users can cherish for years and years.