Stephanie Keep Founder and Project Director
After earning a masters in evolutionary biology from Harvard, Stephanie chose to leave research behind, and now resides comfortably in the center of a Venn diagram that includes science education, academia, and communication. She has fifteen plus of experience with educational publishing, curriculum development, advocacy, and assessment. She’s even written scripts for a YouTube science show, made professional development videos for PBS, appeared on a podcast, and told a live audience at a Story Collider event about her time working with Stephen J. Gould! Seriously, she is like the free spot on the “science education” bingo card.
Shannon Morey Founder and Director of Teacher Development
Shannon is our resident teacher (so you know we’re not a bunch of hacks), rocking high school physics, AP physics, chemistry, AP chemistry, environmental science, and robotics and coding at Abbott Lawrence Academy in Lawrence, Massachusetts where she also serves on the Instructional Leadership Team. Before making the transition to teaching full-time, Shannon earned a masters in chemistry from MIT and was a co-founder and co-leader for ComSciCon. Shannon was a 2015 Knowles Teacher Initiative Fellow and is now a Knowles Senior Fellow and in 2021, she received the Michigan State University Young Alumni Award.
Helpers & Past Leaders
Kelsey Lucas Academic Liaison
Kelsey has been a friend-of-BiteScis since the beginning. As evidence of her awesomeness, she has collaborated and contributed to lessons in biology, physics, and chemistry. In her non-BiteScis life, she is fascinated by how the amazing behaviors aquatic animals do arise from the inner workings of their bodies and the physical laws that govern them. Leveraging data and techniques from multiple scientific fields, she takes a holistic approach to understanding how fishes interact with the water around their bodies and how these interactions affect their life history, habitat choice, and evolution.
Andjela Padejski Development Associate
Unapologetically curious, painfully scrappy, and deeply passionate about building equity in education, Andjela brings experience in prospect research and nonprofit development. Over the past couple of years, they have worked in nonprofit media, including CalMatters and the Center for Investigative Reporting. Currently, they are pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and working towards a future at the intersection of art, technology, and education.
Cara Battersby
Cara received her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, then held postdoctoral fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and is now an assistant professor of physics at the University of Connecticut. She spends a lot of her time studying how stars are born in our Galaxy’s center, developing a new mission with NASA (in spaaaace!), and secretly wants to be Carl Sagan when she grows up. She loves anything outdoors (hiking, biking, climbing, etc!) and spending time with her wonderful family and friends. Cara is a co-founder of BiteScis.
Erica Kimmerling
Erica is currently the Senior Policy Advisor for Public Engagement in Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Previously she managed the formation of the emerging network for Leaders in Science and Technology Engagement Networks (LISTEN) as ASTC’s Civic Science Fellow supported by the Kavli Foundation. She also completed a Hellman Fellowship in Science and Technology Policy at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences working on the Public Face of Science Initiative. In this role, Erica was the lead drafter of the project reports Perceptions of Science in America, Encountering Science in America, and the Public Face of Science in America: Priorities for the Future. Erica completed her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering as a NIH Pre-Doctoral Fellow at Tufts University in 2016. Erica is a co-founder of BiteScis.
Timothy Matthews
A nonprofit fundraiser, corporate marketer, and academic focused on early language development, disciplinary literacy, and the engagement of LGBTQ+ parents, Tim completed his doctorate in human development at Harvard in 2020. Though he’s a quintessential social scientist, he’s thrilled to work with the team at BiteScis to broaden the curriculum’s impact and reach at this critical moment. His master’s degrees in urban education policy (Brown) and language and literacy (Harvard), along with time at the Boston Public Schools’ central office, have allowed him to dig into the essential role access to quality curriculum plays in the vital work of equity and inclusion.
