Anny Staten

I come from a family of educators, and ever since I was a little kid, I knew that I wanted to help empower young people and teach them. It's always been in my life, been a part of my life. I've been in education for 17 years since graduating from Michigan State University. I'm the Assistant Director at the Apple Developer Academy, a partnership with Apple and Michigan State University. We're the only one in America. I help run the day-to-day operations here in Year 5, which started in fall of 2021, and I've been there since the very beginning. We're teaching learners coding, business, design, project management, and soft skills to help them further their career opportunities into tech and app development, using the Apple ecosystem tools to help them bridge into the technology world. We help innovation and creativity that drive growth through the technology field. What I'm most proud of is empowering the next generation of leaders. I've been a part of building strong foundational teams, and I've created other leaders through my leadership. That's very important for me. That's why I'm still here. Outside of my work at the Academy, I created a new hobby for myself where I have a series of workshops that I conduct on my personal time to help new up-and-coming leaders. It's a mini-series that I do through Eventbrite that's free. This is year 3 for me, and they're usually monthly Saturday mornings, but now I do two a month. What I really find most rewarding is that we are lifelong learners in the continuation of wanting to learn. The community that we can build within tech, within everything we do, is a major highlight of my career. Some days I come in and put out like 15 fires, but then you think about the reward, and it's worth it.