I make websites and apps for learning foreign languages.

After finishing a degree in linguistics, I wanted any job that would let me work with and learn more foreign languages. I had always heard about how the Defense Language Institute had the best language immersion programs in the world, so I decided to join the US Air Force as a language analyst so I could get a chance to go there. After my four-year contract I went back to school, which eventually culminated in a master’s degree in molecular biology at the University of Helsinki. I worked in a handful of research laboratories, but somewhere along the way I discovered I enjoyed programming a lot more than dissecting mice, so I gradually shifted into creating apps and websites.+

What interests me most is how the languages one speaks determine the world we see and participate in. I don’t believe a language itself shapes thought, but the languages we speak affect the information we’re exposed to, the cultural milieu we find ourselves in, and the interests we cultivate. They shape the stories we hear, the topics we socialize about, and our ability to integrate into different social groups. The languages we grow up with are determined by chance. Yet through our own efforts, we can change our destiny, joining new worlds that never would have been possible otherwise. This has always been the coolest thing in the world to me.+

The question I’ve thus kept in my head for decades is: how can we best learn foreign languages? I’m not just interested in languages themselves, but in the worlds they create and what it feels like to inhabit them.+