Since high school, Andrew Zigler has been an advocate for career and technical education. In 2010, he was elected by his peers as the National High School President of SkillsUSA, a partnership of students, teachers and industry working together to ensure America has a skilled workforce. During that time, he travelled to Washington, D.C. multiple times to lobby for skill-based and vocational training in public schools, empowering our future workforce with alternatives to a four-year degree. By the time he was eighteen, Andrew had spoken to audiences as large as 30,000 people.
Pursuing his education, Andrew graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 2014 with a degree in Classics. The same year, he was accepted into the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program and travelled abroad to work as a foreign language instructor. For two years, he taught K-8 English in Kuwana, Mie and mentored hundreds of students. He also journeyed to Taiwan and Korea during his time in Asia—even visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone.
After returning to California in 2016, Andrew sharpened his web dev skills and received formal training from Udacity. He became the lead front-end developer for an e-learning company and has over a half-decade of experience creating business and education solutions in JavaScript. Along the way, Andrew broadened his skills in a hybrid business operations director role. He is now a professional developer advocate for open source collaboration software, creating resources to empower the developer community.
In his free time, Andrew builds virtual worlds and tooling to support them. He primarily experiments with artificial life, telepresence, and accessibility concepts. He also runs an assortment of websites, such as this one.