INFLUENCERS

featured in the film


Robert Moses

An American educator and civil rights activist, known for his work during the Civil Rights Movement. Moses developed the nationwide Algebra Project, which emphasizes teaching algebra skills to minority students based on broad-based community organizing and collaboration.

Karim Ani

A former middle school teacher and math coach, he is the founder of Citizen Math, an online math platform that supplements math lessons for grades 6-12. Ani’s goal is to provoke questions, spark conversations and activate young minds.

Julia Angwin

An award-winning investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the impacts of technology on society, she is also an author of several books.

Roger Antonsen

A logician, mathematician, computer scientist, author, public speaker, science communicator, and artist, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, and a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, California, ICERM, and Brown University.

Ben Blum-Smith

A Mathematician-in-Residence at the Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics, Blum-Smith is also a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and a Visiting Academic at the NYU Center for Data Science (CDS).

Jo Boaler


A professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, and the faculty director of youcubed, she authored Experiencing School Mathematics which won the “Outstanding Book of the Year” award for education in Britain.

Erika Bullock


An Associate Professor of Mathematics Education and Curriculum Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her research agenda consists of two key segments: conceptualizing urban mathematics education and historicizing issues in mathematics education.

Dr. Eugenia Cheng

A mathematician, educator, author, public speaker, and early pioneer of math on YouTube. She has authored several books, including How to Bake Pi, Beyond Infinity and x + y : A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender.

Keith Devlin

A mathematician and popular science writer who directed  the Stanford Mathematics Outreach Project and co-founded the university’s H-STAR institute and Stanford mediaX. He is a World Economic Forum Fellow, and for many years was NPR’s “Math Guy.”  

Jordan Ellenberg

Jordan Ellenberg is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is also a Discovery Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, where he is part of the Machine Learning group and the Institute for Foundations of Data Science. He is the author of How Not to Be Wrong.

Daniel Finkel

Founded Math for Love where he develops math games and curriculum, trains teachers, and produces professional learning materials. His goal is to give everyone the chance to fall in love with mathematics.

Maisie Gholson

After teaching high school mathematics, she now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Education. Within a Black feminist framework, Gholson’s research studies identities and relational ties to mathematics, peers, and teachers.

Rochelle Gutierrez

A professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Education, her scholarship focuses on issues of identity and power in mathematics education, paying particular attention to how race, class, and language affect teaching and learning.

Steven Levitt

The William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, he directs the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. He co-authored Freakonomics, which spent over 2 years on the New York Times Best Seller list.

Dan Meyer

A math teacher and advocate for better math instruction. After earning his doctorate from Stanford University in math education, he served as Chief Academic Officer at Desmos, making digital math tools more accessible and engaging for students. He continues to shape the future of math, technology, and learning as the VP of User Growth at Amplify.

Emmanuel Schanzer

After spending several years as a program manager and developer before becoming a public high school teacher and middle school academic coach in Boston, he is now the founder and co-director of Bootstrap, a forum for teachers around the world to share and develop their math curriculum.

Alan Schoenfeld

An Affiliated Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, he served as president of AERA and vice president of the National Academy of Education, and he holds several awards given to a pure or applied mathematician for distinguished contributions to the mathematical education of K-16 students.

Ismar Volić

A Professor and Chair of Mathematics at Wellesley College, he's the director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He's also the author of Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation.

Talithia Williams

An associate professor of Mathematics at Harvey Mudd University who is renowned for her popular TED Talk, “Own Your Body’s Data“, Dr. Williams takes sophisticated numerical concepts and makes them understandable to a wide audience.