226. Cathleen Kong: Innovation Starts with Empathy

Cathleen Kong is a computer science educator and former software engineer at Microsoft with experience teaching, designing technology-enhanced learning experiences, and building software. She is passionate about helping students develop technical skills through engaging, real-world projects in computer science and AI. In our conversation, she shares her interdisciplinary journey of becoming a software engineer and the connecting thread of wanting to build things that help other people. Her work as a teacher comes from a place of hope that new generations of leaders will be equipped with not only the right skills, but also a solid sense of moral values to inform their decisions. Enjoy what Cathleen has to say about being a global citizen.