Our Team

Educational

Elena Giudice

Lead Consultant, Curriculum Development, upper elementary and middle schools

Elena has broad experiences teaching Spanish, ESL, and French in the USA and abroad in international schools in France, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, and Malta. Elena has been trained in many frameworks such as the AP, IB, IPC, and Montessori, taking the best from each. In her 29 year career, she has founded two lower school programs and led teacher teams as a department chair. Elena leads workshops for language teachers advocating for oral proficiency and for a real life application focus for world language programs.

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Holly Morse

Specialist, Oral Proficiency, PreK-12

Holly has been a World Language teacher for 43 years. She has been trained as a MOPI , AAPPL, and AP rater. With the help of Greg Duncan and Helena Curtain, experts in language teaching, she led her department in developing an oral proficiency-based program according to ACTFL standards. Helping students build confidence and competence in speaking a second language through engaging instruction is what fuels her passion.

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Laura Davis

Director, Curriculum Development, preschool programs and elementary schools

Laura is a language & travel enthusiast with over 10 years of experience teaching second languages at the elementary level. Her focus has been teaching Spanish and ESOL to grades PreK-5th grade. Laura has taught internationally and here in the United States. She is passionate about children starting their second language journey as early as possible. Her focus has been on cultivating fun & exciting ways for young students to love & learn a second language.

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Jean Plum

Consultant, Curriculum Development, middle and high schools

Jean has been a Spanish teacher for 15 years, entering her14th year at the University School of Milwaukee, a K-12 independent school, where she teaches Upper School Spanish and serves as the Dean of Freshman Students. Jean is also the Administrator for the Panama Service Project, LLC, a service trip for high school students and teachers that builds connections in both language and culture with participants, host families, and the children at Nutre Hogar, an agency that serves children suffering from malnutrition.

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Kit Strauss

Founder and CEO

Kit graduated with a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. After having children, Kit realized her true passion and talents were in teaching, as she naturally inserted an element of learning into everyday events with her children. In particular, Kit was determined to find a positive and successful way to teach her children to communicate in new languages, with confidence and pride. This devotion led Kit, with her children, and an incredible team of teachers and developers, to create FL4K.

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Marcela G.

Consultant, Curriculum Development, elementary and middle schools

Marcela, originally from México City, has been teaching Kindergarten to 8th grade Spanish at a South Texas private school for 23 years and still going strong. Marcela also taught English in México for 3 years. Marcela's favorite quote is: "Si hablas a una persona en su propia lengua, las palabras irán a su corazón." (Speaking to someone in their language opens up their heart to your message.) Marcela teaches her students that language opens up hearts and doors.

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Technology & Creatives

Eli Strauss-Reis

Co-Founder and CTO

Eli is currently taking a few years off from Stanford University, where he studies linguistics and computer science. Since the age of four, Eli has been a polyglot, fluent in Mandarin, Spanish, and English, and having also studied French and Arabic. Eli is fascinated by the way languages work and how they influence culture. In high school, Eli studied in China through a U.S. State Dept. scholarship and taught Chinese to children during summers at Concordia Language Villages. Eli is passionate about foreign language education and co-founded FL4K when he was 11.

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Hoc Le Viet

Developer

Hoc Le is a motivated and dependable web developer with comprehensive skills in multiple technologies. He is a fast and dedicated learner with a growth mindset, constantly looking to develop new skills and expand technical knowledge. With many years of experiences in working in local and global companies, He put stress on responsibility, communication, and efficiency. He likes helping children with learning, and have worked for many learning platforms.

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Daniel Quijano

UI/UX Designer

Danny is a Product Designer born and raised in San Jose, California and a recent graduate of California Polytechnic State University. He's passionate about designing and developing digital products that people can use with ease and enjoy. Danny incorporates Gestalt psychology and user experience methods into his designs. Away from his computer, he can be found watching sports, eating food at his favorite local spots or running around at Disneyland with his loved ones. Danny is also a novice watch collector as well.

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Parth Patel

Front-end developer

Parth is a computer science student and a software developer from Toronto. He loves to learn and apply his skills towards solving problems and building products in an efficient and innovative way. In his downtime, he loves to surf and cook food from different parts of the world.

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Artur Barbosa

Front end designer and developer

Artur is a Computer Science major at Stanford University. Artur has always been passionate about design and technology, and how they can positively impact education generally and in his home country, Brazil. Artur has contributed to, and continues to contribute, to the conception, design and implementation of the FL4K’s main product and website.

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Hannah Silva

Marketing Specialist

Hannah is a Marketing Specialist for FL4K with a Bachelor's Degree in Marketing. She has a passion for marketing and enjoys using her skills to contribute to the exciting advances that happen every day at FL4K.

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Ty Morse

Music Consultant

Ty Morse is an American composer, documentary film producer, and entrepreneur whose technology startup, Songwhale has become a leader in mobile marketing in the U.S. and internationally. Ty has been featured as an expert in digital strategy for direct response marketing, especially in the Asian market, in NY Times, Forbes, Huffington Post, Wired Magazine, NPR, PBS, Discovery Channel, and other leading media outlets. In addition to composing music for Discovery Channel programming, Morse is also co-writer of the musical Frankenstein: The Rock Opera.

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James Felice

Composer

James has been musician, singer, and songwriter for over 15 years. He is from the Hudson Valley of New York.

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Christian Mack

Front-end developer

Christian is a highly creative and passionate individual from the San Francisco Bay Area. For nearly a decade he was a Chef by profession before his career as a developer. He still cooks like he's in a restaurant everyday and is probably cooking as you're reading this. He is an old soul, so on a random Friday night you'd most likely find him keeping to himself or enjoying the company of a select few. His hobbies include cooking, gardening, snowboarding and exploring nature in general.

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Guowang Miao

Frontend developer

Guowang is a web developer who has broad experience in full-stack development using various web frameworks and cloud services (AWS, Firebase, etc.) as well as modern javascript frameworks such as React, Next, and Node. Guowang's current focus is working on the frontend with modern JavaScript frameworks. Guowang enjoys discussing and learning new techniques, as well as sharing ideas. Building state-of-the-art, easy-to-use, user-friendly websites and applications is his passion.

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Praneeth Kolichala

Frontend developer

Praneeth is a rising junior at Stanford University, majoring in computer science. He loves math and learning about languages, especially their history and relationships with other languages. His hobbies include math, tennis, ping pong, and playing the piano. He studied French in high school and speaks it reasonably fluently, and he also speaks a bit of Spanish.

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Anton Chen

Frontend developer

Anton's been working for 11+ years in software development and helping companies and teams build digital solutions and bring them online. Heavily focused in JavaScript technologies now and has excellent skills in problem solving, like to learn new technologies to be up to dated and design enterprise level architecture.

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2021 Interns

Fateemah Faiq

Marketing and Branding

Fateemah is a current Linguistics undergraduate at Stanford University with a focus in sociolinguistics. She grew up in multiple countries, leading her to study 8 languages through school programs. This led her to be especially interested in language education. Fateemah is also passionate about marketing and has supported multiple organizations and companies in building brands, enhancing social media, and streamlining operations.

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Hailey Shi

UI/UX Designer

Hailey is a senior at Columbia University studying Visual Arts, Art History, and Business Management. She was an intern during Spring 2021 and enjoyed developing FL4K’s brand identity and designing web prototypes.

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Jonathan Lum

UI/UX Designer

Jonathan is a college student studying Cognitive Science with a specialization in Design & Interaction at UC San Diego. At FL4K, Jonathan has been working as a Product Designer and has helped design activities that students and teachers alike can enjoy. In his free time, he likes to bake, make boba drinks for his friends and family, and dabble in graphic design.

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Luke Lin

Technical Designer

Luke was a Technical Designer at FL4K. Luke worked on both the design and code for the game activities. Currently, Luke's a senior at New York University studying Game Design and Computer Science. HE loves playing all sorts of games, and takes inspiration from them when making games. "I hope that everyone has fun playing our activities as they learn a new language!"

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Matthew Early

Backend Developer

Matthew is a prospective Linguistics B.A. and Computer Science M.S. at Stanford University, where he has taught a class on using Computer Science for Social Good and has worked as a research assistant in the linguistics department. Outside of FL4K, he has interned as a software developer at WhatsApp, Facebook, and the Chicago Transit Authority. He speaks English, French, and Esperanto, and is studying Japanese. He is a former contributor to the Esperanto course on the online language-learning platform Duolingo.

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