Ali Karbassi
Founder & CEO, We All Code
Ali Karbassi joined the Institute of Design (ID) as an Adjunct Faculty member in 2017. At ID he teaches courses including Digital Media and Prototyping Interactions. Ali’s areas of interest include social entrepreneurship, prototyping interactions, computer-aided design and development, interaction design, and technology trends.
Industry Experience
Ali is the founder and CEO of We All Code and runs the monthly sold-out public speaking event Ignite Talks Chicago.
Ali founded We All Code in 2013 after ten years in the corporate sector, working in the advertising and tech industries, as well as a startup focused on the Internet of Things (IoT). Throughout his career, he noticed how few women and persons of color worked professionally in his field. We All Code is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Chicago dedicated to sparking curiosity in coding among kids aged 7 to 17, with a particular focus on girls, students of color, and low-income students. Its mission is to introduce a diverse group of children to the fun of coding by providing free educational resources and hands-on classes. Ali and his team at We All Code envision a world where all children have an equal opportunity to ignite their curiosity through coding. We All Code has since taught more than two thousand students across Greater Chicago and engaged over three hundred volunteer mentors, many of whom work in technology-related fields.
At monthly sessions of the popular Ignite Talks Chicago, presenters get twenty slides, which automatically advance every fifteen seconds. The result is a fast and fun presentation that lasts just five minutes. Ali’s aim is to bring a diverse audience together to expand their worlds into areas they have never experienced. Presentations can range from a history of the Samurai sword to the economics of video-game skins to a manifesto on boxes.